


The Path That Brings Us Home

by ComeChaos



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 19:24:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20476241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComeChaos/pseuds/ComeChaos
Summary: After Spock’s return, Chris longs to reconnect. To reach for that sliver of what they used to be, and find a way for both of them to heal.





	1. The Temple

**Author's Note:**

> _Known events according to ‘Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2’:_ The senior officers of the Enterprise were debriefed at Starfleet Headquarters while the Enterprise underwent extensive repairs. 124 days after Discovery’s disappearance, Spock officially resumed his duty, the seventh signal appeared in the Beta Quadrant, and the Enterprise once more went boldly into the unknown.
> 
> This story takes place in the months between the sixth and the seventh signal.

* * *

_“Embrace the secret fire that moves from stone to stone. _  
_Command your walls to wither and free your mind to roam. _  
_Then, though your steps may falter, your heart won’t beat alone. _  
_Together we shall wander the path that brings us home.” _

– Traditional song from Moloka, Kelsari Homeworld

* * *

The first weeks are stressful beyond belief.

Chris thought that saving the world on a hope and a prayer would be the worst of it. But, as it turns out, there are few forces in the universe capable of challenging Starfleet Command when it has set its most persistent minds on finding out the truth.

They comm him late at night, when he’s in the middle of a really good chapter, when he’s brushing his teeth, when he’s dozing off on his balcony overlooking the bay. In the mornings, when he’s still sleeping, when he’s barely awake, when he’s in the shower with soap in his eyes. After weeks of interrogations, Chris never wants to see another admiral badge again.

Command does let him off the hook eventually. And just like that, he is free to go wherever he wishes.

After months in space followed by weeks confined to the Headquarters, even all of Earth feels too small for him. It’s too crowded, too lush, too bright – all at the same time. He misses his ships.

Discovery’s splendour, state-of-the-art down to the last coil bracket. The bravery of her crew rivalled by none.

Enterprise’s ageless grace. The hum of her engine, a loving whisper always in the back of his mind. The steady presence of his Number One, always keeping him simultaneously safe and on his toes.

Still, some days are easier than others.

Chris is halfway through a poorly seasoned salad at a cliffside restaurant somewhere in Pesaro, Italy, when his comm alerts him to an incoming message. Routing it to his padd, his heart skips a beat.

He hasn’t heard from Spock since those frantic last hours before they were processed for interrogation – hasn’t seen him since they were raw and broken, scrambling to save what could be saved, holing up in Number One’s personal quarters in that final, desperate attempt to synchronise their stories.

Chris finds his napkin and swipes at his mouth – he’d rather not be having this call with dressing on his face. Then he taps the padd, and Spock’s familiar face comes into view, framed by uneven strands of dark hair. The blood and dirt are long gone.

“Spock.”

“Captain, “ Spock says with a small nod.

His hair is both shorter and messier than the last time Chris saw him, giving Chris the impression that Spock has been cutting it in a haste with the single objective of keeping it out of his eyes.

“Spock, I am so pleased to see you.”

That is something of an understatement. In his mind, Chris is thrown back with full force to that moment on Discovery’s bridge – taking leave of Spock one last time, no time or place to say the words that would not let themselves be spoken. He stops for a moment to clear his throat, choking back the emotions that are threatening to well up like a rogue wave.

“How are you holding up?” he asks.

“Considering the circumstances, quite well, I believe. It is good to see you again, even if only on screen.”

“It’s good to see you too.”

Damn it, he’s repeating himself now.

_Get it together, Chris._

“So, what’s on your mind? I’ll have to assume you haven’t picked up the habit of making social calls.”

Spock shifts and looks down for a moment. His face remains quite expressionless, but Chris can tell that something is bothering him to a degree that is uncharacteristic of him even now.

“I have decided to delay my visit to Vulcan,” Spock says eventually. “There is an ancient temple on Kelsar Three that I would like to visit first. The cargo vessel _Monsoon_ will depart from San Francisco in four days and pass by the Kelsar system on its way to Denobula. I have arranged for quarters onboard, as well as storage space for one warp-capable shuttle.”

Spock falls silent again and simply looks at Chris through the screen, so Chris shoves his own concerns aside and gives him an encouraging nod.

“Uh-huh. Go on.”

“I fully understand that you have your own priorities, Captain, and I have nothing but the deepest respect for your personal time. However –”

“You – want me to come with you?”

Chris can’t stop the smile that is tugging at the corners of his mouth. The sudden mix of gratitude and relief makes him want to laugh out loud for the first time in weeks. But then he sees the tension in Spock’s face, and immediately collects himself.

“I’d be honoured to.”

Spock visibly relaxes, his stiff coat shifting as his shoulders drop half an inch.

“Then I will ask that you meet me at the designated launch site on the morning of the twenty-fourth. Bring hiking boots.”

With that, Spock pragmatically ends the call. Chris stares at the empty screen for a few seconds before setting the padd aside. He looks out over the sea that stretches from east to west – from the steep cliff below to the sky at the horizon. He sticks his fork into the salad and puts another bite in his mouth.

It really isn’t that bad, now that he thinks of it. The spring onions are a nice touch.

Yes, some days are easier than others. And this week is beginning to look promising.

* * *

The Monsoon is a small freighter by any standards. Her captain – a female Andorian in her sixties – gives Chris a displeased look when he extends his hand to her in greeting.

“These won’t be the standards you’re used to, Captain Pike,” she says loudly. “I’ve no doubt you’ll find our humble accommodations lacking, but I trust that you and your companion will abide by our rules during your stay.”

_It really is far too early in the morning for this_, Chris thinks as he takes a deep breath and channels his best inner diplomat.

“I’m sure we’ll be perfectly fine, Captain. And I promise we’ll stay out of your way as much as possible.”

His smile has no effect whatsoever on the Andorian, who simply grunts and ushers him aboard with a sharp nod.

Spock is waiting for him next to the doors of the ship’s only turbolift – an elegant black shadow against the bulging grey walls. In the past few days, Chris has played out every possible version of this moment in his head. He never quite figured out what to say.

“Captain,” Spock says simply.

“Spock,” says Chris.

The turbolift doors open. Spock swings his bag over his shoulder, and they step into the lift. Chris clears his throat.

“So, what do you say we skip the titles? Our host sure doesn’t seem to take too kindly to mine. Besides, I really wouldn’t mind just being Chris for a while.”

They reach their floor and enter into a long, narrow corridor.

“Rooms four and five,” Spock says, stopping in front of two adjacent doors with small numbers stencilled on them.

Chris nudges the panel of the first one and peers into a small space, no wider than the corridor they’re standing in. Along one wall is a fold-down berth. Along the other, an array of shelves, racks, and hooks for storage.

“Right,” he mumbles under his breath.

Spock opens the door to the second room, which is a mirror image of Chris’s own. He disappears into it without a word, so Chris steps into his own little cabin and begins to unload his bag onto the shelves and racks. They will spend a total of four days onboard, so he might as well make himself at home.

Chris has made some brief research on the temple they are about to visit. He knows now that it belonged to one Order of Light – a communion of philosophers that flourished some five thousand years ago on the Kelsar III, the Kelsari Homeworld.

The Kelsari Colonies, renamed so after the relocation of the administrative capital from the Homeworld to the Prime Colony, is a relatively young nation. It consists of four worlds, which make up one of those unfederated islands in the midst of Federation space. Captain Hernandez, who made first contact in 2155, described the Kelsarians as _“highly communal and hospitable, but fiercely protective of their cultural and natural resources”_. As a testament to the accuracy of her assessment, there was indeed very little information to be found in the Starfleet and Federation databases, and Chris gave up after the third or fourth note urging him to _“contact the Kelsari Homeworld Visitor Centre for further details_”.

The little cabin is surprisingly warm. Chris hangs his jacket on a hook by the door and pulls at the collar of his shirt. He looks around for environmental controls and jumps a little when the comm system above him makes a crackling noise. The captain’s voice comes through, announcing their departure.

Chris pulls the berth down and sits on the edge, listening to the growing murmur of the engines.

* * *

They have a light breakfast in the empty mess, after which they both turn to their padds and read for some time in companionable silence. Spock sifts through scientific papers, fingers flying across the screen, while Chris makes his way slowly through the first chapters of Ira P. Jonasson’s latest award-winning historical novel. It has far too many names in it, and he realises too late that he probably should have chosen something lighter.

At lunch, he is approached by two young crewmen who have about a million questions each about his missions and life aboard the Enterprise. Their shy enthusiasm reminds him of young Ensign Sylvia Tilly, and he ends up talking to them until the captain sticks her head in and hauls them back to work.

During dinner, it’s the ship’s Saurian engineer who pushes a chair up to their table, and in a thick accent proceeds to asks more in-depth questions than Chris could ever hope to answer. At some point, Spock makes a strategic retreat and spends the rest of the evening off the grid, doing god knows what.

Chris wakes up the next morning with a dull ache in his lower back and a resolve to finally have a constructive talk with Spock. He finds himself desperately missing the conversations they used to have, back on the Enterprise, before Spock began drifting away.

Long discussions on philosophy, literature, history, religion – sometimes well into the night, until Chris was bleary-eyed and nodding off, and Spock gracefully collected their empty glasses before heading back to his own quarters. Other times, they would sit in silence, content to simply watch the stars together.

Chris has so many questions still, and if their years together mean anything, he believes he has earned at least a few answers. But more than that, he longs to reconnect. To reach for that sliver of what they used to be, and find a way for both of them to heal.

His hopes get crushed halfway through breakfast. Spock is reviewing proposals for further upgrades to the Enterprise’s systems, which seem to be flooding in from every engineering team in the fleet now that she is stuck in spacedock. He asks Chris a question, and Chris is finishing his cup of coffee, forming the reply in his mind, when the ship’s captain approaches their table, looking as if she intends to have them both keelhauled. She swings a chair around with a loud clang and sits down on it backwards, crossing her arms on the backrest.

“So,” she says, “I had a talk with my engineer last night. Seems the lateral sensor array’s been acting up. Now, this puts me in a bit of a bind. I don’t like running cargo when my debris detection has blind spots.”

She squints at Chris, who opens his mouth, but Spock is already ahead of him.

“I believe I am familiar with the base configuration of your system. How may I be of service?”

“Well,” the captain drawls, “that’s very generous of you. Feel free to head down to deck three whenever you’re ready.”

With that, she stands up and leaves just as quickly and loudly as she appeared. Chris looks at Spock, who raises an eyebrow at him.

“With your permission, sir?”

“Yes, of course,” Chris says with emphasis, doing his best to hide his disappointment.

The day passes slowly, and were it not for the immense relief of knowing that he is finally on his way somewhere, Chris would be climbing the walls. Spock fails to show up for lunch, so Chris spends another hour in the company of Monsoon’s crewmen, which isn’t at all unpleasant. It’s just – not what he had hoped for.

Close to midnight, there is a knock on his door. Chris turns off his padd and checks his reflection in the blank screen – even his hair looks tired – before opening. Spock is standing outside in nothing but his trousers and a long, loose t-shirt. Chris suddenly feels very much awake.

“Come in.”

“Considering the lack of space, I must assume you mean that figuratively.”

Chris lets out an undignified snort.

“You clearly missed out on some great slumber parties as a kid,” he laughs. “Did you find the problem with the array?”

“I detected the malfunction causing the problem at eleven hundred hours. It then took us six hours to manually reset the isolinear chips. A rather tedious process, seeing as the crew of this vessel have failed to develop a proper labelling system for their data units.”

Chris smiles.

“Well, that’s a lousy reason for avoiding me all day.”

The second the words are out, he realises how much they sound like an accusation. Spock’s sudden frown makes him wish he could take them back.

A door somewhere at the end of the corridor opens and closes, and a stream of voices echoes loudly against the walls. Spock looks toward the sound, then back at Chris. Then he steps forward, climbs onto the foot of Chris’s berth, folds his long legs, and closes the door.

“Then again,” he says, “space can come at the expense of privacy.”

“Well,” Chris mumbles, staring at Spock’s naked feet before looking up to meet the intense gaze of Spock’s dark eyes.

“Despite your implications,” Spock says, “my intention has not been to avoid you. During the past days, I have studied the meditative techniques of multiple non-Vulcan cultures, as well as devoted significant time to the practice itself. If I have neglected to share any information of importance with you, I offer my apologies. I seem to have grown unaccustomed to explaining myself.”

Chris rubs the bridge of his nose.

“No, I’m the one who should apologise. Look – I’m here as your friend. Not as your captain. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, _or_ ask my permission. Just take whatever time you need, do whatever you need to do.”

Spock frowns imperceptibly.

“Then I fail to see your point.”

_The point is that I miss you so much it’s driving me out of my mind._

In another world – if Spock were anyone else – Pike would say the words without hesitation. In the here and now, he shies away.

“Never mind. Just a tired old man’s poor attempt at a joke.”

“You are hardly _old_,” Spock says with an arched eyebrow.

The reply is surprising enough that Chris loses track of whatever he was about to say next. He takes a deep breath, trying to sort out his thoughts. This close, he can pick up the faint artificial scent of the soap from the shared shower room. It is lingering in Spock’s hair, which still appears slightly damp. Chris feels sweaty and far too self-conscious. His mind refuses to piece itself back together, but a moment later, Spock resumes speaking in his usual, matter-of-fact tone of voice.

“The captain has informed me that we will drop out of warp at nine hundred hours tomorrow. I’ll send you the weather specs for our destination.”

He shifts his legs and opens the door in one swift move. Chris clears his throat.

“Sure. Great. See you at nine hundred hours then.”

“Launch bay one. I’ll have the shuttle ready.”

Spock stands and moves to close the door behind him, but stops himself, hand hovering over the panel, and looks at Chris one last time.

“Good night, Captain,” he says softly.

And Chris can forgive the use of his title when it is spoken with such affection. There is magic in Spock’s words, and suddenly all the broken pieces seem to align themselves a little better. When Chris has crawled under the blanket and turned off the lights, he places his palm flat against the metal wall. Imagines Spock’s steady breathing on the other side. And for the first time in weeks, he can almost touch that bittersweet feeling of home.

* * *

Chris takes a wrong turn and enters the launch bay at 9:04 hours the following morning. If Spock is disappointed in his failure to be on time, he does not show it.

Spock has foregone his restrictive robes in favour of a softer looking tunic, though still black and form-fitting to a fault. A dark patch of chest hair is peeking out above the V-shaped neckline, drawing Chris’s attention. Chris himself opted for a lightweight coat with plenty of pockets. Simple, practical.

Spock makes a motion toward the shuttle.

“Shall we?”

They walk together up the ramp, and Chris instinctively aims for the pilot’s seat before stopping himself.

“Uh, do you want to–?”

He waves vaguely toward the seat. Would taking the helm be a gesture of consideration, giving Spock one less thing to concern himself with? Or would Spock perceive it as Chris asserting his rank, despite yesterday’s conversation?

Spock considers him for a moment.

“I would be pleased to take the helm if you wish to rest, sir. However, I am under the impression that you enjoy flying.”

“Oh yes,” Chris sighs, smiling ruefully.

God, they haven’t even left the landing pad, and here they are, tangling themselves up in second guessing like two overly polite strangers. Chris drops himself in the pilot’s seat before either of them can say anything to make the situation worse.

”You rest. And – drop the _sir_, please.”

“Yes,” Spock replies, with an intonation that only emphasises the left out title at the end of the phrase.

He sits down next to Chris, who brings up navigation control and leans back, leaving space for Spock to reach over and input the coordinates. A few minutes later, they are gently hovering ten inches above the bay floor. The shuttle’s comm system comes alive, letting a voice through.

“Bridge to Captain Pike. Bay doors open in five. All hands, clear launch bay one.”

“Copy that,” Chris replies as he taps the auto-align, allowing the Monsoon’s computer to provide them with data for the launch sequence. “Ready for departure.”

“Stand by to drop force field. Remember, we won’t be waiting around for you. If you don’t make it back in time for the rendezvous, you’ll have to head straight for Denobula. Bay doors are open. Force field is dropped. You’re clear for departure.”

Chris takes them out. The shuttle slides out of the ship’s maw only to be swallowed by the vastness of space, floating serenely around its own axis as Chris adjusts their heading. A welcome feeling of calm envelops him as he logs the take-off, switches to impulse, adjusts again, and finally engages the warp drive. He glances at Spock, who has already closed his eyes in meditation. Chris leans back in his own chair, folds his hands over his stomach, and drifts into his own thoughts.

He wakes up some time later and checks the time, only to find that all of ten minutes have passed. He looks over at Spock, and looses himself for a moment in the sight. This man, whom he far too recently thought he would never see again. Now, sitting serenely beside him, Spock looks miraculously untouched by the immeasurable sorrow that has passed through his life. Through both of their lives.

With his mind, Chris traces the contours and little details of Spock’s face. The sharp outline of his beard. The curve of his nose. The soft shadow of his dark lashes. It is precious, this moment. After the events of the past months, he is painfully aware of how fragile it is. He fights the sudden urge to reach out, to cross the invisible veil between them, and confirm to himself that Spock isn’t merely a figment of his tormented imagination.

And then his thoughts leap into forbidden territory. His hands on Spock’s neck, sliding up to explore the texture of his hair, the shape of his ears –

Guilt explodes in his gut. A searing blast of white-hot shame. He is reeling from it, for a moment no longer able to do anything but breathe, breathe, as he struggles to collect himself. Spock is his _subordinate_. Worse than that – he is young, impossibly fragile, and self-sworn to a philosophy and culture that would take one look at Chris’s desires and find them appalling.

Chris tears his eyes away from Spock. He has _no right_.

“Something is troubling you.”

Chris jumps at Spock’s voice, shame flaring up again as if Spock might have heard his thoughts.

“What – What makes you say that?”

“Your breathing is elevated, its cadence uneven. This change began suddenly, without any discernible physiological or external cause. The logical conclusion would therefore be that you have encountered a troublesome element within your thought process.”

For all the scientific detachment of his words, Spock regards Chris with nothing but kindness. Before last night, Chris had almost forgotten how luminous, how tangible Spock’s affection for him can be, when Spock chooses to show it. And this new version of Spock shows _so much more_ than the one he once knew.

And it angers him suddenly, this tenderness that pulls him in, against everything that he stands for. If only Spock had been –

Chris sinks deeper into his chair.

“Right,” he mumbles. “Never mind. It was nothing important. Tell me about the temple – The, uh, the Order of Light.”

Spock puts on a surprisingly elaborate display of exasperation, but reaches for his padd without protest. He brings up a small map and holds the padd out for Chris to look at.

“We will touch down on this plateau, approximately four kilometres from the temple grounds. From there, we will proceed down the first flight of stairs, at which end we will rendezvous with our guide. Beyond this point, we are only permitted to bring one short-range communication device, for translation purposes. All other technology will have to remain behind.”

Chris frowns.

“The reason for that being–?”

“The temple structures are exceedingly vulnerable to low frequency electromagnetic radiation. An unfortunate side effect of the very properties that made them the centre of the Kelsarian philosophical practice.”

“I see,” Chris says.

Not that he does, but he is certain that everything will become clearer once they reach the planet.

Spock zooms in on the temple valley.

“Once we have completed our descent, we will step into the temple grounds at this point of entry. You may feel a dull pressure behind your ears. This is normal.”

“Wow. Okay.”

Chris ponders the information while Spock puts the padd away.

“Now,” Spock says, “if there is nothing else you require of me, I would prefer to spend the rest of our journey preparing myself.”

This time, Chris knows better than to feel rejected. If there is anything Spock has taught him during their years together, it is the value of honest, straightforward communication. Chris himself is no doubt a better leader for it. And after everything that’s come to pass, he is grateful for the reminder.

He straightens out in his chair, lets himself drift with the passing stars for a moment, then closes his eyes and settles in.

* * *

Kelsar III is a world of dark conifers and white rocks. As Chris steps out of the shuttle, squinting against the pale sky, it all seems strangely dichromatic. As his eyes adapt, however, he begins to notice that the rock under his feet is laced with streaks of jade green and goldenrod and red ochre. He gives himself another moment to take in the view, before he lengthens his steps to catch up with Spock.

They make their way down the shallow stairs at an easy pace. Spock keeps fervently tapping his tricorder to get the most detailed readings possible before he will have to leave it behind and proceed on his own. Chris follows one step behind, quietly observing the scientist at work. It pleases him deeply to watch Spock do something out of sheer delight, although he isn’t sure if Spock himself has ever perceived a clear boundary between duty and self-fulfilment.

Some twenty minutes later, sombre wooden walls begin to rise up on either side of the stairs. They pass through a tall arch covered in vines and find themselves in a yard where the stairs level out into a platform. Thick beds of ferns and low-growing bushes frame each side, reminiscent of the cypresses and yews of Earth. To their left, a stream of clear water springs forth from the top of a stone and disappears again into the ground a few metres ahead.

Chris is so busy taking in the surroundings that he jumps a little when he finally notices the figure moving toward them. She throws off her hood, revealing a pair of silver grey eyes in a dark face, and a charming smile full of needle-sharp teeth.

“Spock!” she exclaims in a melodic voice. “_Enserrë_.”

“Greetings,” Spock replies, holding his communicator out between the three of them. “This is Captain Christopher Pike, who will be joining us. Captain, this is Kora, our guide.”

“Greetings,” Chris says with a nod. “Your planet is very beautiful.”

Kora’s smile widens further. She is a head shorter than Chris and dressed in a flowing, velvety garment that blends in with the lush vegetation around them.

“Thank you, Captain. Your presence honours us. We don’t get many visitors these days, politics being what they are.”

Spock turns toward Chris.

“Kelsar is one of the disputed systems in the ongoing border conflict between the Kelsari Colonies and the Valatera Syndicate,” he explains in a low voice.

“Uh-huh,” Chris whispers back, throwing Spock a sharp glance.

Then Kora asks for their technical equipment, and he resolves to put his concerns aside. He has no reason to doubt his second officer’s ability to perform an adequate risk assessment. Spock chose this trip for a reason. And what Spock wants, Chris will damn well give him.

He digs into his pockets and places his padd and communicator in Kora’s slender hand. Spock does the same with his padd and tricorder, while confirming that his comm meets the short-range, limited-frequency requirements. Kora briefly excuses herself and disappears through a wooden door with their belongings.

When she returns, they exit the yard through another arch and begin to walk down the next set of stairs. The steps here are steeper and less even. Chris is decidedly not looking forward to the ascent back to the shuttle.

“The Order of Light rested on three core tenets,” Kora says as they are walking. “Truth, Compassion, and Thought. The philosophers of the Order initially constructed their temples to facilitate the Sharing of thoughts, but after Halia’s revelation, these were converted into the Centre temples that we see today. The temple you are about to enter is our single most well-preserved sanctuary founded in the pre-Halian era. Since we restricted the habitation of our homeworld and moved all of our industry off-world to the colonies some sixty years ago, the temple has been allowed to revert to its former state, to the point where we may once more experience its mysteries.”

Kora stops for a moment and turns around to look at Chris.

“I understand humans are non-telepathic,” she says, tilting her head with an apologetic smile. “But you are fortunate. You have a friend who is able to give you a glimpse of the journey.”

There is something about the way she says _‘_friend’ that makes Chris go weak in the knees. It’s unreal how natural it feels, this idea that he isn’t Spock’s commanding officer, but simply his equal. His friend. It would be so easy for Chris to take it at face value.

Spock is looking at him now as well, with a soft expression that speaks of amusement, happiness, calm. The sun has momentarily breached the thick layer of clouds and is submerging the world in a golden glow. Chris finds himself thinking that if he could keep but a single image of Spock in his memory, this would be a pretty good contender.

* * *

Kora leads them further and further down into the valley as she talks about the Order and its temple. The rhythm and tone of her voice is musical, and Chris allows himself to move with it, focusing on his own breathing. Spock has dropped back to walk by his side, and seems to be doing the same. As the stairs become narrower, the back of their hands brush together. Hot sparks course through Chris’s body, and he instantly slows down to give Spock more room.

Spock matches his pace without missing a beat.

It’s not as if they never touched _before_. But even then, touch between them was limited to handshakes and casual pats on the back, the occasional hand on the shoulder, and – once – a stiff hug that Spock seemed to want to transport himself out of and Chris ended up feeling bad about for days.

They continue side by side, their hands meeting ever so briefly every three or four steps, and Chris has to remind himself over and over not to pull away. Spock is choosing this – this tactile input, whatever its purpose is. Chris is at a loss, but he’ll be damned if he’ll deny Spock something so small and simple. It’s such a small thing, really.

At length, they stand at the bottom of the valley, facing a row of white arches. Kora points to the path in front of them and speaks of how the temple was carved into the ground between two great veins of red muonite ore, and of how the first Thought Stones came to be.

“And the philosopher architects placed the Stones in each of the sixteen corners of the temple, and raised the Gates of Light before it. And for nearly a thousand years, philosophers from all around the region would come to this temple to take part in the Sharing of thoughts within the song of the Stones. Today, most of the records of the revelations from this period have been lost, but those that remain are preserved in the Grand Library in Sovina, should you wish to study them. Standing before the originals is quite different from reading any of the digital transcriptions, I assure you.”

“Now, in the Kelsarian year of 235, a great feast was held at a temple much like this one. To that feast came Halia Ra’ë, a commoner from the Moloka province. Halia’s father was a philosopher of the Order, but her _mother_ was a priestess of the Serene Cult, who placed introspection above the Sharing. As a commoner, who wore the mark of the Cult no less, Halia was not allowed to enter the temple grounds. But one night, when the Lords and the Guardians were sleeping, she did just that.”

Kora stretches her arms out.

“There Halia stood, alone in the centre of the temple, and there she reached into herself, and the Stones centred her Thought. And in that moment, she saw herself as one, and was no longer divided.”

Chris looks at Spock from the corner of his eye. Spock’s eyes are fixed on Kora, and the look on his face is one of complete focus. Something clicks in Chris’s mind.

_No longer divided. Resolving her inner conflict, becoming whole. Oh, Spock. This is why we’re here._

A fierce impulse takes hold of him, and he reaches for Spock’s hand. Slides his fingers around it, presses his fingertips to the soft palm.

_I’m here. I’ve got you._

No reaction at first. And then, Spock’s fingers curl around his and squeeze tightly. For the briefest of moments, Chris feels something he cannot quite begin to describe. And then the hand is pulled away, and the feeling is gone.

Spock closes his communicator and holds it out Chris, almost absently. Chris takes it and remains behind as Spock steps through the first arch, suddenly unsure of what is expected of him. He really knows nothing about what is supposed to happen now.

He looks down as Kora puts her slender hand on his arm. He shakes his head to clear it and flips the comm open, switching the translator back on.

“You should go with him,” Kora says.

“What do I do?” he whispers under his breath.

”Just be with him,” Kora says, smiling at him as if the two of them are sharing a secret.

He looks up to discover that Spock has stopped and is waiting for him. Taking a deep breath, Chris straightens and decides that whatever comes next will be just like any other mission.

They pass through the rest of the arches together. The last one opens up suddenly to a wide polygonal pit – its smooth walls made of the same white stone as the rest of the landscape. A flight of stairs leads down to the red floor some three metres below. Chris realises for the first time that the temple is neither underground nor a building, but a structure open to the sky. As they walk down into it, he sees the stones set in the walls, one in each obtuse corner, and the golden inlays in the floor that radiate from the centre to each of the stones.

In that centre, Spock gracefully sits down and settles into his usual meditation posture.

“You may move,” he says, “but please do not speak or leave the temple for as long as I am meditating.”

Chris nods to himself. As quietly as possible, he moves closer to one of the stones. It is perfectly round, despite its rough surface, and laced with the thinnest veins of colour that glimmer and shift before his eyes. He reaches out to touch it, but changes his mind and pulls his hand back mid-air, suddenly uncomfortable. He turns to look at Spock instead, and eventually gets down on the floor as well, his back against the wall, resting his knees after the long walk down.

His knees are grateful for the respite, and for a while, Chris is content with just sitting there, watching Spock’s profile and feeling the outdoor air on his face. But when the better part of an hour has passed, he is beginning to grow restless. Is this really Spock’s idea of a suitable trip to invite his captain to? Days of travel, only to leave Chris to his fate in a corner while Spock does whatever it is he’s doing?

Chris knows he’s being childish. It’s abundantly clear that Spock is doing all of this for a reason. Chris’s failure to understand said reason doesn’t make it any less rational or important. And Spock chose Chris to be his companion on this journey. It’s just that – _well_, Kora had made it sound like this ‘journey’ endeavour would somehow be more of an experience. When Spock touched his hand –

_No._

Chris is not going there. He won’t indulge in the false hope that he can have something he should not be desiring in the first place.

He closes his eyes and rests his head against the wall. The air seems to be changing, because suddenly there is a distinct pressure on his ear drums. An oscillating throb, soundless but growing in strength.

What was it Spock said?

_Low frequency –_

He feels it in the back of his neck now, a vibration, like a continuous tremor coming from somewhere deep beneath the ground. It’s not dissimilar to the sensation just before a spore jump, but it’s richer somehow, more profound. Something inside Chris tells him not to move or open his eyes. He turns his focus to Spock blindly – reaches out for him with his thoughts.

A pulsating light. He is floating in an infinite void of blackness. Far, far below, a single point of blinding white flares and dies, and reignites, again and again. A neutron star revolving around itself, trapping him in its gravitational pull. A heartbeat. He drifts toward it.

And that is when another rhythm draws his attention. This one is slow and cyclic, like a rolling wave on a black ocean. Chris submits to it without hesitation, losing track of space and time as he is submerged in its rise and fall.

Breathing.

Spock is the ocean – his chest expanding to encompass all of the universe in a single breath.

Chris listens, follows the flow of the tide, until he once more feels the stone floor under himself, solid and unmoving. He is pulled back into the present, into the white temple where Spock is rearranging the world around them. Spock breathes out – Chris can feel the exhale in his own lungs – and the world shivers, and settles into its new shape.

It is done.

Chris feels a hand on his shoulder. He opens his eyes, and finds that Spock is crouched down next to him. And Chris has never seen Spock’s face quite like this. His cheeks are flush, his mouth open, and his eyes have gone black like wells beneath tightly knit brows.

“Captain, are you alright?”

“What–?” 

“This is my fault. I failed to foresee the full extent of the effect that the stones would have on you.”

Chris scrambles on the floor and manages to get to one knee before suddenly feeling overwhelmingly weak. He doesn’t fall, however. Instead, he feels Spock’s strong arms wrap around him and pull him to his feet. Slowly, he begins to find his balance, steadying himself with a hand against the wall. Spock lets him go, backs away, and Chris swipes at his face with his free arm.

“I’ll be fine, just – give me a moment. Really, it’s alright.”

“No, it is _not_.”

Spock’s voice is sharp enough to make Chris wince.

“In my negligence, I committed an unspeakable transgression. I violated your trust and your mind. You should not have to suffer my presence.”

“Spock –”

“No.”

Spock turns away and begins to move toward the nearest set of stairs, his steps echoing like thunder against the temple walls. Chris pushes himself away from the wall and staggers across the floor.

“Please,” he pleads, feeling utterly pathetic now that the worst dizziness is wearing off. “I don’t – _Damn it_, would you just get the hell back here?”

Spock stops for a moment, hesitating, which is enough for Chris to catch up with him and nearly knock both of them over as he grabs Spock’s shoulder and slams him into the wall with far more force than intended.

“Fuck! I’m sorry –”

As Chris regains his balance, he realises that Spock has gone still. The Vulcan is standing with his back against the wall, face turned away – his distress so palpable that Chris can taste it on his own tongue, metallic and bitter.

Chris reaches out, then, and takes Spock’s face in his hand. Turns it gently back toward himself. Spock’s eyes are hazy, unfocused, at first – so Chris waits patiently until Spock finally looks back at him – really _looks_. And then Chris breathes in, feeling his chest expand as he opens his feeble non-telepath heart as wide as he can, willing himself to reach out with every fibre of his being – until bright sparks of electricity flow through him where his hand touches Spock’s skin.

“Spock. What happened here was – clearly light-years beyond my comprehension. But what I experienced was nothing short of beautiful. You haven’t done wrong by me, not as far as I’m concerned. If anything, I’m humbled. Thank you – for taking me on this journey of yours.”

Slowly, the darkness in Spock’s eyes recedes. With the subtlest of motions, he leans into Chris’s hand. His beard is so much softer than Chris could have imagined. Chris strokes it lightly with his thumb, and Spock leans in further, like a large cat. Chris finds himself watching his lips.

_This isn’t real, _whispers a sinister voice in the back of his mind.

Chris shakes his head at it.

The sky lights up around them as their breathing begins to slow and synchronise. Spock lifts his hand and places it on Chris’s chest, against his heart. Chris’s eyes fall shut, and he sways forward, melting into the points where their bodies touch, until he can feel the warmth of Spock’s breath on his face. And nothing could feel more right. For the first time in months, they are exactly where they are supposed to be.

Then there is a smattering sound in the distance, and a shrill voice pierces the air.

“The Valatera! They’re coming!”

Chris jerks back and spins around. Kora is standing at the top of the wall, her braids flying around her face. Behind her, the glowing light has turned into a formation of beams, approaching rapidly. Seconds later, it is followed by the unmistakable roar of a low-orbit spacecraft.

“Get out!”

Chris leaps up the stairs following Spock’s lead, and they begin running toward Kora’s position. The lights are straight in their eyes now. Chris looks away and runs blind.

When the first charge hits and throws them off balance, he drops to his knees on the paved path. He screams out loud – as much in pain as in warning.

“Get away from the arches!”

With the second charge, the world goes sideways in a cloud of pale dust, and the stone arch in front of him shatters in a million pieces.

The third charge blows up behind him, and Chris can do nothing but crouch down and cover his head against the rain of stones stinging his hands, his arms, his back.

Then it all goes quiet.

The lights are gone. The dust swirls and disperses, and when Chris dares to raise his head again, what remains of the ancient temple grounds is all but part of the rest of the landscape, rocky and dry and desolate.

Five thousand years of history, wiped out in the blink of an eye. The Gates of Light stand no more.

Chris gets up. Looks around.

“Spock!”

He draws a deep breath, ready to call out again, when he spots a shadow of black hair against the white rocks some twenty metres ahead. Stumbling forward, he makes his way over to the spot.

“Spock! Talk to me!”

Spock is lying slumped forward over a jagged stone block. Chris’s heart is racing as he closes the distance between them. He throws himself against the stone, reaches out, runs a hand trembling with adrenaline over Spock’s hair. After a long, agonising moment, Spock tilts his head back and forces his eyes open.

“Sir –”

His voice is barely a whisper, and Chris has to blink hard and swallow before he can reply.

“Goddamn it, Spock. You scared the hell out of me.”

“Captain,” Spock mumbles.

Chris strokes his hair, slowly, gently, as if comforting an injured animal or a child. Spock’s face is paler than he has ever seen it before, save for a dark trail of bruises across his forehead. Chris reaches into his own pocket and whips out the communicator, but there is nothing for it to make contact with, so he puts it back, his heart sinking.

“I should not have brought you here,” Spock whispers, voice raspy and slurred.

Chris stops his hand mid-motion.

“Spock,” he says firmly. “Listen to me. We’re going to be alright. I’m going to get us back to the shuttle. Okay?”

Spock shakes his head.

“Did you see Kora?” Chris asks.

“She was – well ahead of us. It is possible she managed to stay clear of the explosions.”

“First good news so far. Can you get up?”

“I cannot.”

The second the words hit him, Chris is pushing himself off the stone block and making his way around it to where Spock’s body is stretched out. With his right foot, Spock has found purchase among the broken stones, and his right leg now carries part of his weight, keeping him from sliding to the ground. His left leg, however –

Chris takes one look and promptly wishes he hadn’t. Below the knee, Spock’s left leg is an unrecognisable mess of blood and rags and all the wrong angles.

“Oh god –”

_Breathe, Chris. You’re no cadet. You’ve dealt with worse._

“This – is bad. I’m not going to lie to you.”

_So much blood. There’s so much of it. How much has he lost already?_

Chris looks around, searching for any structure among the rocks that can safely hold the full length of Spock’s body.

“We have to get you on the ground.”

He shoves his hands under Spock’s armpits and pulls him up enough to wrap his own arms around his chest. Spock’s body is uncooperative, heavy with shock and pain, and Chris’s boots are slipping on the blood-soaked ground. Using every last bit of strength, he manages to drag Spock to the side and lower him safely down into a sitting position. He props him up against his own legs and takes off his own coat in one swift move.

“I’m going to need your shirt, Spock. Come on, help me get it off.”

Spock is tensing up, groaning low in his throat, and Chris is forced to deal with the fact that moving him must have sparked a thousand broken nerves back to life. He curses at the damn impracticality of Vulcan clothes as he pushes Spock’s tunic up and fights to pull it over his head. He helps Spock into his own coat, guiding his arms with shaking hands, and lays him down, making sure that he is flat on his back before moving over to address the injury.

“Okay, I’m going to tie your shirt around your leg. That means I’ll have to lift it. I want you to stay with me. Can you do that?”

Spock gives him a small nod. His eyes open for a moment to meet Chris’s, and the look of unconditional trust in them is almost more than Chris can handle. He has to stop and steel himself before he can look at Spock’s left knee. The joint is intact, but just below it, a bone fragment has torn through the skin, jutting out like a broken precipice in a dripping pool of green. Chris swallows, lays the tunic out, spends a few seconds deciding where he should place his hands.

“Okay. Here we go. In three, two, one –”

Spock twists his head away and collapses in on himself in a guttural scream. He clenches one fist and pounds it against the stone, once, twice, hard enough to bruise. Chris can do nothing but hold his leg in place as he struggles – as he fights to stop his consciousness from slipping away from him.

He ties the tunic as hard as he can around Spock’s thigh just above the knee. Then he sits back, swiping at his forehead with his arm. All of his adrenaline-fuelled strength is suddenly being washed away by an immense wave of fatigue, and damn it, it’s_ too soon_. He needs to stay active, needs to keep going.

“Listen. I’m going to get the shuttle and come back for you. Do you understand?”

Spock shakes his head.

“The frequencies –”

Chris reaches out and takes Spock’s hand in his. Squeezes it gently, like he did on the stairs on their way to the temple, back in that other world, before all hell broke loose.

“I know, Spock. I know. It’s okay. I promise I won’t harm the temple. You just stay awake.”

He reaches into the lower right pocket of his coat, which Spock is now wearing, and takes their one communicator out. He presses it into Spock’s hand and closes Spock’s fingers around it before letting go. As he gets up, a spike of pain slashes through his own leg, and his right knee nearly gives out under him.

“Fuck!”

_I hit my knee when I fell. Must have damaged something in the joint. Damn it._

It can’t be helped. He has to make the climb back to the shuttle. He’ll crawl if that’s what it takes.

He lets his eyes rest on Spock’s face one last time. Pretends that those soft lips haven’t turned a sickly green – that his smooth skin isn’t glistening with the cold sweat of life slipping away.

“I’m going to the shuttle. With any luck, I’ll find Kora along the way. You just stay awake, Spock. Focus. Stay awake.”

_I’m not losing you again. I can’t._

Tears burn behind his eyes as he turns his back to Spock and begins to make his way through the rubble toward the stairs. He breathes, and breathes, and shuts his own thoughts out, narrows everything down the present, the path, the next step.

And so he limps forward, step by step, toward their only hope.

* * *


	2. Instinct

* * *

There is no one here but him.

No Kora, no lights in the sky. Nothing but the stairs and the stones, and finally – _finally_ – the wooden arch. Chris stumbles through it and falls to his hands and knees, trembling all over.

_Focus. Find the second communicator._

He gets up. Looks longingly at the stream of water among the ferns beside the platform. God, his mouth is so dry. He swallows, continues toward the door that Kora used when they first came here. It’s unlocked and opens to a windowless room inside the wooden wall. He steps inside and waits, catching his breath while his eyes adapt to the dark. There is an empty table, a few chairs, and a primitive stove with a kettle. Eventually, he is able to make out a wooden cabinet at the far end of the room.

Chris is beginning to understand this planet. There is white stone, and there is dark wood, and everything is either one or the other. He makes his way over to the cabinet, which, unlike the front door, proves to be thoroughly locked. He bangs his forehead against it and inhales slowly through his nose, too tired to even curse at the object. Then he takes two measured steps back, looks over the cabinet door, steels himself, and side kicks it.

The door gives way, and the jolt of pain in his knee brings tears to his eyes, but Chris still feels victorious as he reaches into the cabinet and curls his fingers around the communicator.

He finds the two padds and the tricorder as well, then realises that he no longer has any pockets. After the strain of the climb, he has all but forgotten that he is down to his t-shirt. He leaves the padds behind, and limps out of the room while opening the comm.

“Spock, this is Captain Pike. If you can hear me, please come in. If you can’t talk – just tap the mic for me.”

No response.

Chris tucks the comm under his arm and switches on the tricorder as he approaches the water spring. He collects a sample and hails Spock again while waiting for the result of the analysis. Still nothing. The tricorder beeps. He is not surprised to find that there is a near complete absence of industrial pollution in the water. The fluoride level, however, is high. 47 milligrams per litre. Not safe for sustained consumption, the tricorder informs him, but he intends this to be a one-time occasion, and he can hit himself with a hypospray once he gets to the shuttle.

He cups his hands under the water stream and drinks greedily. Once his thirst is quenched, he washes the worst of the sweat and dust off his face, splashing water into his hair and onto his neck. The pain in his knee recedes back into a dull ache, and he starts to feel more awake again as the air bites at his wet skin.

He turns his head toward the end of the platform, toward the next arch and the final climb.

As he continues up the stairs, he sets the comm to a continuous automated hail to all receivers within range. Still no response from anyone. Chris suspects that the signal isn’t strong enough to carry even halfway to the nearest settlement, but surely there has to be some orbital array capable of picking it up?

As far as heartbreaks go, leaving Spock on Discovery was easy. It was the inevitable result of a rational sacrifice. It had purpose.

In this moment, Spock is bleeding out alone on the surface of an alien planet. There is no reason, no higher meaning, no greater good. And Chris won’t accept it.

He opens a separate, private channel to Spock’s communicator.

“Spock. I don’t know if you can hear me. I’m going to guess you can’t, but talking to you right now is the one thing that keeps me from losing it, so there you have it.”

“I don’t – I don’t know how much I have left of this life. I had to make a sacrifice, one that – No, it doesn’t matter. What matters is _you_. So – whatever I have left, I’m giving that to you. You hear me? If there’s any way you can – You just take as much as you need, okay? It’s yours.”

“And you’d tell me I’m being completely illogical, I know. I know. There’s _no_ part of me that’s being rational right now. But sometimes all we have is hope, Spock. Hope, and faith. And I’ve got to believe you’ll get through this. Because what I feel for you goes beyond duty. Beyond friendship.”

Chris stumbles on the steps and catches himself with his hands. He _needs_ to take a break, to sit down, just for a few seconds, but then he lifts his head, and does a double take, because above him, the path suddenly comes to an abrupt end and disappears into the sky. He’s almost at the end of the stairs.

He makes it to the top half running, half crawling on all fours. The shuttle sits exactly where they left it – hollow and smooth with the bleak sky reflected in its metal hull – a strange sight in this world of stone and wood. Chris slams the hatch control and steps through the opening even before the hatch has fully opened. In less than a minute, he is in the pilot’s seat with thrusters engaged.

He lifts off, launches the shuttle straight up into the air, and opens all hailing frequencies. Glancing at the panels, he diverts half of the power from environmental control to boost the signal.

“This is Captain Christopher Pike of the United Federation of Planets. I require immediate assistance. Please –”

“This is Kelsari Air Control. _Stand. Down._”

Chris jumps in his seat, nearly pivoting the shuttle sideways before regaining control of his hands.

“Air Control, my weapons are offline. I’m a _tourist_. One who happened to visit your temple right when it was blown to hell. Now, I have a critically wounded man at the blast site, and our guide, Kora, is missing. I have to take this shuttle down there stat, and I can’t afford to –”

“Oh my lords! You’re inside the quarantine zone! Orbital, get Ground Control _now_. Tell them to drop the dampening field. There are off-worlders in there!”

There is a rush of tapping noises and distant shouting, and then the voice from before resurfaces.

“Captain, you are clear to approach the site. We offer our sincere apologies. Had we known there were people in the quarantine zone –”

“Yes,” Chris snaps, punching the controls as fast as he can, “apology accepted. Approaching now. Are you able to provide medical assistance? We’re dealing with an open fracture, severe blood loss. Can you synthesize the fluid if provided with data on the patient?”

“We’re dispatching a medical vessel presently, Captain. But we do not have any technology for fluid or tissue synthesization here on Kelsar, not even for our own people.”

_Goddamn it. Fucking hell._

“Copy that. We’ll make do.”

Reaching the temple by shuttle takes no more than a few minutes. The difficult part is to spot it at all. The beautiful red stone floor, which would have been a dead giveaway, is now but an indent in the landscape, as uniformly covered in white rocks and dust as everything else. Looking down at the destruction, Chris finds it a small miracle that he escaped with his own life.

He spots not one, but two dark figures down on the surface, just as the shuttle’s comm system goes live again.

“Captain Pike? This is Kora. Is it you up there?”

Chris startles himself with a breathless laugh of pure relief. Spock is not alone.

“Kora! Yes, it’s me! Hold on, I’m coming down.”

The landing is a rough one. Chris is in far too much of a hurry to bother with the advanced guiding system, so when he cuts the thrusters, the shuttle slams down, slides, and tilts before coming to an ill-balanced stop among the boulders and stones. Chris yanks the emergency medical kit out of its compartment on his way to the hatch and climbs out.

Spock is lying on the ground with Kora huddled beside him. She has streaks of blood on her face and clothes, but her dark skin still retains a warm tone, and her eyes are bright.

“Captain!”

She gets up and waves toward him, even though he is only metres away.

“I tried comming you on your device, but then everything got blocked by the dampening field –”

“Yes, I know,” Chris yells back at her as he closes the last distance between them. “Kora, I need a status report.”

He drops to his knees and opens the medical kit before even daring to look at Spock.

“He’s really bad off,” Kora replies, her voice breaking slightly on the last words. “He was conscious when I found him, kept talking – thought I was someone named _Mikel_? But then the field came up, and the translator didn’t work anymore, so he – he just drifted away –”

Chris takes Spock’s limp hand in his. Turns it over and feels for the pulse. Nothing. If it’s there, it is so faint and so slow that he might as well be imagining it.

_God, no –_

He leans down and checks for breathing, but he just can’t tell. His own head is spinning. He feels sick. He digs around in the med kit with clumsy hands, finds the hypo he’s looking for, and punches five cc’s of cordrazine straight into Spock’s neck.

Distantly, beyond the roaring in his ears, Chris can hear Kora speak to someone over the comm. Her words are drowned out by the sheer emptiness that is filling him. He sits next to Spock, holds his hand between his own, rubs it gently. He raises it to his face and presses a single kiss to the cold, dirty fingertips.

_Come on. Come on, come on, come on –_

An infinity passes. Then Spock’s hand twitches almost imperceptibly between Chris’s.

Chris jerks upright and shifts his hands, feeling again for Spock’s pulse. And this time, he finds it. Faint, but steady, and growing in strength. Chris is barely surprised when he realises that he can hear it in his head as well. A rhythmic, primordial beat, deeper than his ears could ever perceive.

He raises his eyes and finds Spock looking at him. Chris gives him an unsteady smile, and Spock – high on cordrazine – returns it with a soft, confused smile of his own.

There is a tap on his shoulder, and Chris reluctantly forces himself back to the present reality. Kora crouches down next to the both of them.

“Hey, um – The medical vessel will arrive shortly. I think you ought to get some rest of your own, if you don’t mind me saying so. You really don’t look well.”

“That’s probably an understatement,” Chris mumbles.

If he looks anything like he feels, it’s a wonder Kora isn’t recoiling in terror.

He gives Spock’s hand one last squeeze before letting go, rocking back to lean against the boulder behind him. He closes his eyes, and it’s not until there is a harder tap on his shoulder, and an unfamiliar sharp-toothed face staring into his, that he realises he must have passed out.

* * *

Chris’s first instinct is to get the stranger out of his way. He needs to check on Spock. His attempts are disrupted as the woman in front of him grabs his jaw and points a light into his eyes. He closes them reflexively, annoyed, then opens them slowly again to squint at her. A few seconds later, the light disappears and the woman appears satisfied.

“Well. At least there doesn’t seem to be any brain damage. I’d give you a stimulant, but frankly, I wouldn’t know what to hit you with.”

Chris works his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“Cordrazine,” he croaks, lifting a heavy arm and waving it in the general direction of where he left the shuttle’s med kit. “Right at the top. Half a cc, no more.”

The woman gives him a puzzled look, but turns to where he is pointing, and holds the hypo in her hand a moment later.

“This one? How do I operate it?”

“Here –”

Chris reaches out, and she drops it in his hand. He turns it over, lowers the setting using both of his thumbs, and presses it to his own neck.

“Okay, that should do it,” he mumbles. “Now, please – I need to see him.”

The woman puts her hand on his arm. She is significantly older than Kora, and dressed in a stiff reddish-brown uniform, but her hands are nearly as slender, and her touch just as light.

“Go right ahead. Your friend is stable for now.”

She stands, at last, and moves out of Chris’s line of sight.

Spock is lying on a narrow stretcher only a few metres away. His head has fallen to the side, and the ends of his dark hair are spilling over the side of the stretcher, but his eyes are open, looking at nothing in particular. A lanky male Kelsarian is hard at work by his side. He is holding what looks like a canister and is coating Spock’s injured leg with a bright blue substance that reminds Chris of old-fashioned breach sealant. Which, thinking of it, probably isn’t such a poor analogy.

The medical vessel sits just behind the stretcher. It looks at least a hundred years old and is barely larger than their shuttle.

_Okay. Well. It is what it is._

“Hey, um –” Chris begins, only to realise that he knows neither of the Kelsarians’ names.

“Doctor?” he tries instead, raising his voice a little.

The female medic circles back to him.

“Yes?”

“What do I call you?”

“Well, I’m most certainly not a doctor,” she laughs, “so – not _that_. The man treating your friend over there, he’s one. I’m just a responder, and you can call me Telinn.”

“Telinn. I need to transfer the medical data on Spock and myself to your computer. Think you could help me to my shuttle?”

The moment he finishes the question, there is movement over at the medical vessel, and Chris spots Kora approaching, wrapped in a large blanket. For a moment, he is certain she’s going to trip on it, but she pulls it up around her legs, and moves gracefully to stand next to him opposite of Telinn.

“I’ll assist you,” she says, nodding at Telinn as she drops the blanket on the boulder behind him.

The next moment, Chris finds himself being pulled into a standing position, one tiny female Kelsarian under each arm. The sudden change of posture has him struggling for his balance, and he’s being everything but helpful.

“Lords, you’re heavy!” Telinn exclaims.

They manage eventually, and Chris is able to limp over to the shuttle with minimal help from the two women. The cordrazine is kicking in, doing little for the pain in his knee, but making him more clear-headed and less bothered by it.

He activates the shuttle’s database, pulls up their personal medical files as well as all non-classified medical data on the human and Vulcan species, and sets it all to short-range open access. Then he climbs back out, assures Kora and Telinn that, _yes_, he’s fine now, and moves over to speak with the man who is treating Spock.

The Kelsarian doctor has finished coating Spock’s leg in blue sealant substance, and now seems to be examining the result. Chris touches Spock’s shoulder and tries to make eye contact, but Spock’s eyes are glazed over and move without purpose.

“Captain,” the doctor says under his breath, acknowledging Chris’s presence with a nod in his direction. “I’ve stopped the bleeding, but it’s a miracle he’s still in the fight.”

“Vulcans are tough,” Chris mumbles.

He runs his hand down Spock’s arm, willing his useless touch to reach through the mist and bring Spock back to the present.

“Listen, I know you can’t synthesize what he needs, but what about recoding existent matter? Spock shares half of the genes specific to my own species. If I provide you with my blood, would you be able to alter it sufficiently to sustain him?”

The doctor stops what he is doing and straightens out. He stares into the distance for a long moment with a thoughtful frown on this face.

“Perhaps,” he says eventually. “But not here. We have to get you to the medical facility in Sovina.”

With a sharp exhale, Chris tears himself away from Spock’s side.

“I’m ready to go when you are.”

* * *

Chris is lying on a biobed in a tall grey room, watching a small swarm of doctors and nurses working.

Spock slipped back into a comatose state halfway through the flight to the Sovina Medical Institute. As soon as they touched down on the roof of the building, they were rushed in and hooked up to half a dozen machines each. To compensate for their limited knowledge of xenophysiology, the Kelsarian medical team evidently resolved to monitor every last thing they could think of.

A large, noisy machine to Chris’s left is drawing blood from his arm and processing it for transfusion. A smaller machine to his right is slowly delivering a clear fluid into his blood stream through a catheter in his other arm – replacing in part what is being removed from his system.

Chris feels a little like an laboratory experiment, or a semi-synthetic lifeform. He wonders if this how Stamets felt every time he had himself plugged into the spore drive.

Further to his right, Spock is lying on a biobed identical to Chris’s own. A Kelsarian nurse is presently hooking him up to the second blood bag to come out of the processing machine. Chris watches through half-closed eyelids as the brown liquid slowly disappears into Spock’s arm. He finds the colour disconcerting, but the physician in charge has assured him that the blood is sufficiently altered to provide Spock with what he needs.

He feels unbearably helpless – lying only metres away, yet unable to move, to reach out, to give orders, to touch. As of now, he is nothing but a passive source to be drained until the doctors decide that the risk to his own life is no longer acceptable.

_I’m giving you everything I can. Please let it be enough._

Another medic is working on freeing Spock’s crushed leg from the sealant. The hardened substance has stopped the bleeding and prevented further injury, but now it must be removed so that reconstruction can begin. At first, Chris watches with some interest, but when the torn muscles and broken bones once more become visible through the thinning layers of blue, he can no longer stomach it, and closes his eyes. The last thing he hears before he drifts away is the footsteps and squeaking tires of Spock being wheeled off to surgery.

He awakens slowly, still feeling deadly tired, but certain that he must have slept for several hours. There is a familiar presence by his side, and he opens his eyes, expecting to see Kora or possibly Telinn. It is neither.

“I did not mean to wake you,” Spock says quietly.

The room is bathing in a pink sunset half-light. Spock is dark and swollen around the eyes. His skin still has a sickly sheen to it, and he is dressed in a shapeless grey hospital gown. He is possibly the most beautiful sight Chris has ever laid eyes on.

“Hey –” he whispers, feeling a smile spread on his face.

Spock returns it ever so briefly with one of his own.

“I’ve been told I have you to thank for my life,” he says.

Chris can’t really shrug when he’s flat on his back, but he does his best to put on a casual face.

“Oh. Well. I think it counts as a joint operation.”

“Indeed. The Kelsarians have shown remarkable ingenuity in treating my condition.”

Chris breathes in deeply and heaves himself up on his elbows. Spock is sitting next to him in a wheelchair, his left leg stretched out and encased in a black cast.

“Carbon fibre,” Spock informs him. “Crude, but an effective solution given the circumstances. I shall have to undergo additional reconstructive procedures once we reach Denobula.”

“Denobula? What did I miss?”

“Denobula _is_ the nearest Federation world, sir. While you slept, I took the liberty of arranging passage for us. There is a science ship prepared to rendezvous tomorrow.”

Chris raises his eyebrows.

“Just how long have I been asleep?”

“That I do not know. I awoke a little over four hours ago. My last memory before then is from the temple site.”

Chris lies back down on the bed. He lifts his arm, studies the catheter port that has been left in it. Rubs his lips with his thumb.

“How much do you remember?”

Spock is quiet for some time.

“Little more than lights and sounds,” he says eventually. “Pain. Kora’s voice. You holding my hand. You were there the whole time – even when you weren’t.”

He looks down, dark lashes obscuring his eyes.

“I believe this is a conversation for another time.”

And Chris knows when it’s time for him to back off. He mouths an _‘okay’ _and leaves it at that.

Minutes later, a nurse enters the room with another wheelchair.

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” he chirps. “Your blood pressure is very low, so we don’t want you walking around on your feet just yet – that’s why I was sent to bring you this chair – but you’re very welcome to join your friend for an evening meal up at the diner.”

Chris manages another smile.

“Thanks. That sounds great.”

His head starts spinning when he sits up and shuffles over to the side of the bed, but he makes it into the chair without incident. When the nurse sets it in motion, he startles, gripping the armrests tightly. He can feel Spock’s eyes on him as he slowly loosens his grip, calming himself through sheer force of will. The nurse pushes him forward, and Spock disappears from his line of vision. Chris can hear him fall in line behind them, and though he can’t turn to look, there is no doubt in his mind that Spock moves as gracefully with the help of the wheelchair as he does on his feet.

Some fifteen minutes later, they are enjoying a rich vegetable soup on a white terrace overlooking the city of Sovina. Grey, white, and sand-coloured buildings are basking in the last light of the day. The temperature here is nearly ten degrees warmer than at the temple, and Chris feels relaxed and comfortable under the blanket that one of the nurses has provided for him.

He looks over at Spock, who sits deep in thought with the purple sky reflected in his eyes. Chris lets his eyes linger.

When one travels the universe as much as Christopher Pike, one is bound to become intimately familiar with the concept of telepathy. From Vulcan assisted relaxation techniques to casual Betazoid dinner conversations – like any experienced diplomat, Chris takes it in a stride these days.

The first thing one tends to learn is that telepathy is surprisingly tangible. When your Betazoid partner at the table speaks up, you cannot possibly mistake her crisp voice in your head for a figment of your imagination. The second thing is that the average telepathic interaction isn’t nearly as intimate as one would surmise. Most of the time, she only wants to share with you how inexcusably undercooked the kalo root is, or how atrocious she finds the Andorian ambassador’s choice of clothing.

But this – this is different.

_I reached you. You sensed me, somehow, as you lay injured, just as I sensed you in the temple. _

_How is it that every time I look for answers, all I find are more questions?_

* * *

After dinner, they are transferred from intensive care to a regular ward. Their new room is a good deal smaller than the previous one and less bright – lit mainly by artificial candles. Chris finds himself reluctantly describing it as cosy. He isn’t tired anymore, but the nurse making the next round solves that for him with a quick injection in his arm. He falls asleep to the rolling rhythm of Spock’s steady breathing.

The next morning, Telinn stops by with a box of fruit – _‘homegrown’_, she declares proudly – and the Prime Minister of the Kelsari Colonies contacts them through the hospital channel to deliver an official apology on behalf of all Kelsarians. _So much for peace and quiet,_ Chris supposes.

The question of Federation membership for the Kelsari has been broached on at least two occasions, but Chris knows that disasters like the Valatera attack are just the signs of political instability that will make the Federation Council hold off any negotiations. The Prime Minister is not wrong to presume that Chris might hold some sway with the Council, but in the case of the Kelsari Colonies, there is no shortage of experts who are vastly more suited than him to make recommendations.

Nevertheless, whether the Kelsarians at the Medical Institute are acting out of the goodness of their hearts or in the interest of diplomacy, Chris is grateful for their hospitality. He enjoys a lavish breakfast on the terrace in Spock’s quiet company, after which they return to their room to find new clothes laid out for them. Chris slips into the adjacent bathroom and takes his time in the shower, running his fingers through his hair under the hot water, combing out the sweat and dust. He steps out feeling reborn.

There are no shaving tools or even a comb below the sink, but he finds a box of toothbrushes and makes use of one before drying up and getting dressed.

His new clothes consist of a velvety tunic that ends at his thighs, and a pair of soft, loose trousers – both in a sandy brown colour. His hiking boots have been cleaned up, and Chris puts them on as well, tucking the slightly too long trousers inside them.

Spock takes significantly less time in the shower, and emerges in a dark green tunic of the same cut as Chris’s own. The left leg of his trousers has been rolled up to the top of his carbon fibre cast, which he now walks on with surprisingly little effort.

“Feeling better?” Chris asks.

“Much. We should get going if we want to make the rendezvous without pushing our engines.”

Spock sorts out their small pile of personal belongings while Chris comms their assigned physician, informing her of their departure. She appears a few minutes later with a cartridge that she places in Spock’s hand.

“This has been modified to work with your hyposprays. You’ll require a standard dose every two hours – that’s two point five cc’s – and that’s to keep your body from breaking down the transfused blood cells.”

She looks at Chris.

“Should he become too weak or pass out, it’ll fall on you to make sure he gets these. Keep an eye on the time.”

“Of course,” Chris says, careful to keep his tone neutral as Spock shifts next to him, clearly unhappy with the suggestion that his health might yet deteriorate.

They exit the Sovina Medical Institute the same way they came – in a medical vessel from the roof of the building, which takes them back to the ruins of the temple and their waiting shuttle.

The hatch is still open, and the insides of the shuttle are covered in a ghostly layer of white stone dust. Chris blows on the pilot’s seat before sliding into it with a quiet sigh. Spock manoeuvres into the other seat with a little less grace, stretching out his left leg to the side, into the space between them.

Chris has a flashback as he leans back, letting Spock reach over to enter the coordinates and transmit their flight plan to the Denobulan ship. How is it possible that they left the Monsoon for Kelsar III only yesterday? So much wonder and pain, compressed into such an insignificant fragment of time.

They lift off and circle upward, away from the broken temple. Chris keeps his eyes on the controls, but Spock leans forward to look down, witnessing for the first time the full extent of the destruction.

“Kora devoted her life to this,” he says. “What befell us was but a minor inconvenience compared to what she experienced. She saw, quite literally, the centre of her philosophy destroyed.”

Chris maintains the low altitude for a minute longer while running the air filtration system.

“Must be devastating to lose such a fundamental part of one’s cultural heritage,” he agrees. “But the way you speak, it sounds as if the ancient customs are still being practised?”

He shuts the filters again and prepares for orbit.

“Not precisely,” Spock says. “Kora is a member of the New Order of Light. As a matter of fact, I first learned of her existence when she reached out to _me_. She was looking for guidance in reconstructing her people’s old philosophy for the modern era, and assumed that I, a Starfleet officer, would be more amenable to her cause than most other Vulcans. It is likely that she was correct.”

Chris throws a glance at Spock and lets out a huff of disbelief.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Kora explicitly requested that I share as little as possible of her plans with others. The New Order has yet to be sanctioned by the Kelsari government, who seem to believe that the active practice of what are now considered archaic customs could pose a threat to the perception of the Kelsari Colonies as a modern interstellar nation.”

“So the answer is politics.”

“That is a significantly less precise way of putting it, but yes.”

Chris shakes his head. He replays the memory of meeting Kora for the first time, looks for clues within that memory, but there is no way he could have guessed –

He busies himself with the controls, concentrating on taking the shuttle into a smoothly expanding orbit while adjusting for their target trajectory.

“So,” he says eventually, “what sort of guidance did you end up giving her?”

“Regrettably, I was unable to offer her anything of value. Her request came at a time when I was already beginning to experience the effects of temporal dysplasia.”

“Huh. And then she became _your_ guide, rather than the other way around. Trick of fate, that.”

“Quite the opposite. By allowing Kora to guide me, I enabled her to practise compassion, in accordance with the primary tenet of the New Order. It _is_ young, and its disciples have much to learn from the followers of Surak, but I am growing increasingly confident that a sincere cultural exchange could be of benefit to both parties.”

Chris turns to look at Spock.

“That’s quite an admission.”

Spock moves his lips as if to reply, but remains silent.

Kelsar III curves away from them, encompassed by a sea of clouds through which nothing but narrow rifts of cypress hues can now be seen. The navigation screen flashes, indicating that critical height and trajectory have been achieved. Chris double-checks the numbers, powers up the nacelles, and engages the auto-pilot. Then he drops his hands in his lap and rests his head against the chair.

“The sealant pressure is too low,” Spock says.

Chris’s eyes snap open.

“What –”

_Oh._

Of course. His careless touchdown on the rocks.

“One of the buffers must have jammed,” he says, bringing up the system log and sifting through it. “Switching to backups.”

“Starfleet regulations state that breach safety backup systems must only be used during warp in the case of an emergency.”

Chris stifles a groan. Leave it to Spock to actually remember a regulation that likely remains in effect only because the people in charge have forgotten to scrap it.

“Very well,” he mumbles. “If we can figure out which buffer is stuck, we _should_ be able to force a release without dropping out of warp and completely blowing our rendezvous.”

He gets out of his seat and steps into the back of the shuttle. Searching his memory, he removes two of the floor panels and eventually locates the system he wants to reach.

“Alright. Simulate a series of consecutive micro-breaches. Tell me when the backups kick in. I’m going to manually disable them from here and hope that the shock will release the buffer.”

As Spock runs the simulations and the shuttle is creaking quietly around them, Chris has to admit that the whole thing is rather relaxing. Working like this with Spock – solving a little engineering problem – is, _oh_, so normal and safe. It’s been far too long since their biggest concern was a jammed sealant buffer.

His plan works, and once the disobedient buffer has been brought back to a functional state, Chris is able to slide back into his seat again.

He allows himself no more than a few minutes of rest. With no more malfunctions to take care of, Spock is more than capable of slipping away into his own mind and stay there until they reach their destination. And there is something else Chris needs to sort out – sooner rather than later.

He turns to the side, squeezing his feet past Spock’s leg, and plants them in the space between their chairs. Resting his elbows on his knees, he looks up at Spock, who tilts his head slightly, as if working hard to comprehend the intention behind Chris’s change of posture.

“Well,” Chris says, “here we are. How about you tell me what really happened in the temple.”

Spock regards him for a moment.

“Agreed,” he says in a low voice.

He looks away as shallow lines form between his eyebrows. Chris can all but see the pathways of his mind lighting up as he gets his thoughts in order and decides where to begin.

“The Kelsarians are ecotelepaths,” Spock says at last. “Their natural telepathic abilities are restricted to communication between close members of the family. Parents, siblings. However, with the discovery of what Kora in translation refers to as the Thought Stones, the Kelsarians found a way to extend their telepathic reach. Once refined, the stones could be used to amplify specific bioelectrical patterns within the brain, thus allowing thoughts to be shared even between the minds of complete strangers.”

He stops for a moment and glances at Chris, who nods.

“Still with you.”

“There was, however, a second use for the stones. As the legend of Halia teaches, it is possible for a sufficiently disciplined mind to reach not outward, but into itself.”

Spock pauses again, and Chris draws a deep breath.

“Which is what you attempted to do,” he fills in.

“Yes.” 

And Chris can’t help it. He breaks into laughter, sharp and sudden, because for every word Spock says, the answer Chris is really looking for seems to be drifting further out of reach. Spock frowns at him, his shoulders tense with confusion. Chris sits up straighter.

“Then why did you bring _me_? Don’t get me wrong, I’m still nothing but grateful that you did. But everything you’ve told me so far would suggest my presence was rather redundant –”

He trails off, shaking his head. After a moment of silence, during which Spock shows no sign of preparing to answer the question, Chris reaches out and places his hand gently on his shoulder.

“Hey,” he mumbles, running his palm awkwardly down Spock’s upper arm before withdrawing his hand again.

Spock briefly looks down at his own arm, as if he is struggling to process the touch.

“I needed a point of reference,” he says finally. “You were the one person I could trust to keep me steady.”

And now it is Chris’s turn to lose his momentum. He _knew_ – Of course he did. Spock has painfully few connections in terms of friends and family. Now that Michael is gone, what little he had is irreparably decimated. In all of their shared years on the Enterprise, Chris is likely the person Spock has spent the most time with. In truth, Chris has never reflected much on what that must have meant for Spock. He probably should have. But it’s too late now, and Spock’s admission has him reeling. His hand tingles from touching Spock’s arm.

“You’re saying you needed me to navigate your own mind?” he asks at length, willing his voice to remain unaffected by the transformation inside him. “Like, what, a fixed star?”

“No celestial objects are fixed,” Spock remarks. “It would be more accurate to refer to you as the _centre_ of my process. I only regret that I failed to protect your mind better from it. Evidently, our connection is closer than I anticipated.”

“That’s –”

Chris runs a hand over his face.

“This is a lot to take in, Spock.”

It may be a useless reply, but at least it’s an honest one.

Spock shrugs minutely.

“Fortunately, we still have another hour before our rendezvous with the Denobulans. I do not expect to get much contemplation done in their company.”

“Point taken,” Chris sighs. “I’ll leave you to your meditation.”

“And I shall leave you to yours.”

With that, Spock turns his face forward and closes his eyes, folding his hands in his lap. Chris watches him for another moment before shuffling back into his own seat. He picks at a scab on his hand and stares out at the warp-distorted stars flashing past them.

Chris can count on one hand the number of times he’s attempted to meditate, but right now, he feels inclined to give it a try. He keeps his eyes on the stars, preferring not to accidentally fall asleep, and focuses on his breathing. The slow rise of his chest. The gentle fall.

But as hard as he tries to clear his mind, it keeps betraying him. Again and again, his thoughts circle back to Spock.

_If only I knew what you need me to do. If I’m all you have, and even I can’t reach you, where will you go? When you left the Enterprise – Did I fail you?_

This would all be easier if Chris weren’t so acutely aware of Spock’s presence beside him. But the longer he tries to ignore it, the more Spock seeps into him, like a double vision in reverse, merging the two of them together. Eventually, he sits up and swings back sideways, leaning forward toward the other man.

“Spock.”

Spock opens his eyes, a frown ghosting over his face.

“Yes?”

“There’s something I wanted to ask –”

_How is it that we’re still connected? Why do I find myself struggling to separate your existence from my own?_

Spock turns his head and tilts it a fraction.

“Yes?” he repeats.

Chris opens his mouth, then closes it again.

_If I’m really the closest friend you have – Then I cannot risk scaring you away. I cannot keep pushing you for my own selfish reasons._

He finds himself shaking his head.

“Actually, never mind,” he mumbles. “Sorry for bothering you.”

“_Never mind_,” Spock echoes, each consonant suddenly stressed in a way that hits Chris like a kick in the guts. “An expression you have been using with increasing frequency since our reunion. You claim that I have been avoiding you. That I have failed to answer your questions. Yet from where I stand, _you_ are the one who is hiding from _me_.”

Spock’s eyes are sharp, his jaw tight. And Chris feels the guilt well up inside him. He is caught in headlights, and he can never make this right. He cannot lie to Spock. Yet, if he remains silent, he will break Spock’s trust just the same. And if he tells Spock how he feels, he will lose Spock’s trust forever. And Spock will be alone.

He takes a deep breath, feeling as if he’s about to cross the Grand Canyon on a tightrope.

”I’m sorry,” he begins. “I guess I haven’t exactly been in my right mind lately. But if anything, I’ve been trying to protect you. You’ve had your own worries. No point in burdening you with mine as well.”

Spock’s face remains carved in stone.

“I would prefer it if you let me be the judge of that.”

“I know,” Chris sighs. “But I couldn’t just ignore what you’ve been through in these past months, nor the fact that it’s clearly changed you profoundly. As your captain, I’m responsible for your safety. That had to come first.”

He keeps his gaze steady, willing his eyes to convey how deeply sincere he is.

“It is true that I have changed,” Spock answers. “But I have never understood myself more clearly than I do now. Your attempts at protecting me are misguided, not to mention unasked for. If you have additional questions, I shall do my best to answer them. However, I believe it is time for my medication.”

It takes Chris a moment to realise that he needs to move for Spock to be able to stand. When he does, he quickly scrambles out of his seat and steps into the back of the shuttle. Spock follows him before turning to collect the medical kit. He loads a hypo and tilts his head away from Chris as he runs three fingers down the side of his neck, mapping the sinews and veins, before pressing the device against a smooth patch of skin.

Chris stands transfixed, his mouth going dry as Spock prepares for the injection. He can feel the warmth of Spock’s skin against his fingertips as clearly as if he were the one touching it. It’s wondrous – and it’s terrifying. If he has a soul, there is a tug like gravity pulling on it right now, and he cannot, _must not_ –

He jumps a little when he realises that Spock is looking directly at him, but he doesn’t move from the spot. Frowning, Spock puts the hypo back in the kit and takes a step forward, putting them face to face with each other.

“Captain, are you alright?”

Chris can only nod. He realises how unconvincing it looks, and Spock’s eyes narrow.

“I also would prefer it if you were to speak the truth,” he states, voice perfectly level even as the words take shape with razor-like precision on his lips.

Chris resists the urge to bury his face in his hands. He is losing his grip, and this idiotic behaviour is the last thing Spock needs from him.

_Get it the fuck together, Chris. Just open your damn mouth._

“I – guess I’m still struggling to understand the nature of what happened. You said you – reached into yourself. And that I was the centre of your mental process? But the way I perceived it, _you_ were the fixed point. I was the one moving.”

“To the fixed star, the navigator is the one who appears not to move.”

Chris forms an _‘oh’ _at that, which remains unpronounced on his lips.

“Right,” he says at length. “And, uh, one other thing. I know you never intended for this – _connection_ – to form in the way it did, but now that it _has_, I think I need to know what that entails.”

He holds his breath after finishing the sentence. Now that the words are out, they sound far less unreasonable than he feared they would, but the feeling of uncertainty remains with him until the tense lines around Spock’s eyes finally soften.

“You are aware of it, then,” Spock says quietly. “Forgive me, Captain, but I had to be certain.”

He holds out his right hand, fingers relaxed and curled toward the upturned palm.

“Place your fingers over mine. Do not apply pressure.”

There is a low, steady throb at the back of Chris’s mind as he lifts his left hand and carefully places his fingertips against the soft bends of Spock’s fingers. He stares at their joined hands, then looks up to meet Spock’s eyes.

“Am I doing it right?”

“It is sufficient. Now focus on my presence.”

Chris closes his eyes without thinking. He listens to Spock’s breathing – how is it that he can hear Spock breathe so clearly even over the hum of the engine? He looks at the question in his mind, pushes it toward Spock, who simply folds it for him and gently sets it aside. Chris relents, letting Spock lead him forward, deeper into where they are going. The world slides into darkness and disappears but for the two of them, linked through their hands and minds, through the bond that runs between them like a tether of light.

“Follow your instinct,” he hears Spock’s voice say from somewhere beyond.

And somewhere inside him, a spark ignites.

At first, he is not aware that they have moved closer to each other. Then the tip of Spock’s nose brushes against his, and in that moment, everything is narrowed down to the next touch. Chris lifts his free hand and cups it around Spock’s jaw, guiding their lips together. And he is breaking every rule in the book, _yes, he knows,_ but when his senses are flooded by the perfect pressure of Spock’s lips against his own, nothing else in the universe matters.

And Spock’s lips feels just like he imagined them. Warm, soft, full. And did he _ever_ imagine them. He can finally admit this to himself – finally acknowledge the hopes and dreams he has hidden in the darkest corners of his mind. Every fibre of his body has longed for this moment, and the first taste only leaves him desperate for more.

And _god_, this is really happening. Right here, right now.

And it is _wrong_.

Chris tears himself away, steps backward until he slams into the hull behind him. He stares at Spock, who watches him with an utterly unreadable expression on his face.

“I’m –” Chris begins, and has to stop to get his breaking voice under control. “God, what am I – I have _no_ words for how sorry I am.”

He shakes his head, swallows, lowers his eyes to the floor as he moves to return to the pilot’s seat and hide himself in that sorry corner for the rest of this godforsaken travel.

_This is not who I am,_ he wants to scream. _I’m not some creep who uses others – _

And yet, he took his pleasure without second thought from an innocent man who trusted him implicitly. His subordinate. _Spock. _The man who showed him his human side, his Vulcan side – who was willing to share this with him, who lowered his barriers for him. And Chris accepted his offer of spiritual connection, and he corrupted it. He turned what was forming between them into a mere outlet for his own sexual frustration.

How he wishes he could simply eject himself into space and be done with it.

He’s got a hand on the back of his seat when Spock apprehends him with a single hand on his other wrist, pulling him back as if Chris weighs nothing. And Chris is perfectly familiar with Spock’s strength, but feeling it firsthand is another matter entirely.

“_Stop._”

Spock’s voice is rough like sandpaper, and his fingers are hurting now, pressing into the shallow tendons of Chris’s arm. His face is inches from Chris’s – hot breath and teeth, and eyes black as wells.

For a split second, Chris half expects Spock to hit him. But before he even has time to flinch, something else in those dark eyes catches his attention.

_Lust._

The universe grinds to a halt. And for the briefest of moments, all Chris can think about is that maybe he won’t have to explain to Una and Phil and a room full of admirals why Spock has handed in a request to be transferred off the Enterprise.

Then the shuttle comm whistles, and a Denobulan voice cracks through the air between them, and the moment is gone. Spock releases Chris’s arm, shoving him away forcefully. Then he retreats into a corner like a shadow, leaving Chris to stumble back to the pilot’s seat and answer the hail, all while his heart sinks deeper and deeper into that black pit from which no light can escape.

* * *


	3. Gravity

* * *

Spock was always right about a great many things.

The Denobulan science ship, for example, offers very little in the way of peace and quiet. The very moment they emerge from the shuttle into the small bay, the air around them is alive with footsteps and chatter. The ship has a complement of fifty crew members, of which the majority seem to be present simply to watch Captain Pike and his officer disembark. Chris has never felt less worthy of such a reception.

A smiling Denobulan in a bright white coat greets them and introduces himself as Mission Commander Pheelax. They follow him out of the bay, into a turbolift, and through a smooth white corridor lined with spotlights. Spock walks one step behind Chris – out of sight, but ever in the front of Chris’s mind.

Chris sincerely doubts that Spock will press charges. Whether motivated by stubborn loyalty or a sense of self-preservation, Chris can’t imagine Spock being willing to disclose the events of the past days to more people than necessary.

But he might choose to resign his commission. And Chris can’t let that happen. So, if that’s what it comes to, Chris will resign his own instead.

He can cite the stress of commanding Discovery and the events that led to her destruction. Now that such information is strictly classified, bringing it up should provide enough of an incentive for Command to pull him out of the spotlight as quickly as possible. He’ll recommend Una for the captain’s chair. His recommendation will be turned down – Command always found her to wilful, too unpredictable – but he’ll give it nonetheless.

He can teach at the Academy. Inspire new generations of Starfleet officers. He might enjoy that, given time. He’ll be promoted eventually, of course – and find himself wearing the grey uniform of a fleet captain.

_Is this how it begins? _

_Was this inevitable all along?_

The corridor ends at a pair of large glass doors. Pheelax waves them open as they approach, and they find themselves on a walkway overlooking a vast open workspace, full of scientists working at their stations, or running back and forth shouting at their colleagues. It’s an organised chaos – bright and splendid – and Chris does his best to feel properly impressed by it, but all he feels is a deep tiredness.

“Commander,” he says, “forgive me, but is there somewhere we could get a bit of rest?”

“Certainly,” Pheelax replies with a courteous smile. “We’re coming up on the recreational areas. Mating season has just ended for us, so the private rooms are not in high demand at the moment.”

Chris starts coughing. He turns away from Pheelax as he does so, and catches a glimpse of Spock’s raised eyebrow out of the corner of his eye.

The thought of the two of them alone in a _goddamn Denobulan sex dungeon _– Chris has to use his last bit of energy to regain his composure.

“Oh, I should apologise,” Pheelax exclaims. “We have yet to offer you any refreshments! How about I show you to our canteen instead? Get you a nice cup of tea for that cough, Captain, and if you’re hungry, I’ll have you know we have an excellent chef onboard. ”

Chris stifles a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, that’s very kind of you. I hope our presence isn’t too disruptive to your normal operations, Commander.”

Pheelax waves his hand dismissively.

“Not at all. I assure you we’re delighted to have visitors.”

Chris is all set to head for the canteen in the hopes that it is reasonably quiet, when Spock suddenly speaks up.

“What kind of research do you conduct here?”

_Jesus Christ._

Pheelax’s smile grows impossibly wide with delight. He gestures for Spock to follow him to the edge of the walkway, where he leans over the rail and begins pointing at the various stations and the people working at them. He introduces each of their functions and specialties – past, present, and future – in nerve-racking detail. Microgravity seems to be a component in many of the ongoing projects, although Chris fails to see the point of conducting such research on a ship with artificial gravity, when it could just as well be done on-world inside an anti-grav field.

Spock, however, seems fascinated. His face remains carefully schooled, making him look more Vulcan than usual despite the beard and unkempt hair, but Pheelax smiles enough for the both of them.

Just like the Kelsarians, the Denobulans smile a lot. But where Kora could give Mona Lisa a run for her money, Pheelax looks more like the Joker villain from the retro comics Chris used to read as a child. Chris suddenly realises, with a jolt of embarrassment, why his mother kept insisting that those comics really were too xenophobic for the modern age.

“Captain,” Spock says, having turned around to address him. “I would like to observe some of these experiments. May I be excused?”

“Of course,” Chris hears himself say.

As painful as it is, he understands what Spock is doing. This environment makes it impossible for him to seek solitude and meditate. Engaging in the ship’s operations should at least provide some distraction, and – perhaps more importantly – allow Spock to put a safe distance between the two of them. Because Spock has every reason to avoid being alone with him. Chris only wishes he shared Spock’s ability to compartmentalise his emotions. He licks his dry lips, tasting failure and shame.

Spock heads for a lift, and Chris follows Pheelax to the canteen and the promised cup of tea. He refrains from asking for a bottle of whisky. After a stuttering attempt at conversation, Pheelax’s name is called over the comm, and he is summoned to another part of the ship. He sticks around for another few minutes, apologising profusely for being such a poor host, but at last, he finally gets up and leaves. For better or worse, Chris is alone with his thoughts at last.

He finishes his tea and sets the cup down, wincing at the sharp clang it makes as it connects with the metal table, and wishes again for a proper liquor to burn away the memory of Spock’s lips from his mouth and his mind.

Spock gave him his trust. The most precious and fragile thing in the world. And Chris – _Starfleet’s fucking finest _– turned around and shattered it.

_Rigel VII. Talos IV. Boreth. Kelsar III._

God, he is done with this life.

He buries his face in his hands. It’s more than a little self-indulgent of him, he supposes, to sit around and be angry with himself instead of actually doing something. Beating himself up will change nothing for Spock. If only he knew _what_ to do.

At least Spock will be able to stay away from him from now on. The science ship will take them all the way to Denobula, and from there they can go their separate ways – travel anywhere, in any way they prefer. Neither of them will ever have to spend another hour in that shuttle.

The worst part of it all, Chris reluctantly admits to himself, is that deep inside of him remains a stray spark of hope that stubbornly refuses to die. Spock did not back away. Chris did. And what he saw in Spock’s eyes –

_What would have happened if the Denobulans hadn’t hailed us?_

And then again – Spock’s reaction might have been nothing but shock. Weakened by his injury and the events at the temple, and the months of turmoil before that. The mental barriers he must have lowered when he let Chris take his hand. He let Chris in – and Chris took advantage.

When they set out for Kelsar III, Chris was dreaming of a way to reconnect and heal. He was humbled by the role given to him when he at last understood Spock’s reason for coming there. Now, he marvels at how he could become Spock’s saviour and his perpetrator in the impossible span of two days. How he could save a man’s life one day, only to behave like an absolute idiot the next.

No. He does not deserve hope.

Resigning his commission will be the right thing to do. He’s tired anyway. There have been far too many losses.

“You look like you’ve sold the _gava_ and lost the _geelan_.”

Chris jerks upright and barely avoids knocking over his empty tea cup. A curvy Denobulan is standing in the doorway, looking as jovial as they all do.

“Oh, forgive me,” the woman says, “I didn’t mean to frighten you. You simply looked so lonely.”

She walks over to the drink synthesizer, hips swaying, and orders a tall glass of some sort of fruit juice before coming over.

“I’m Noola,” she says, shaking Chris’s hand over the table. “Chief Astrobiologist, although I don’t think the translator gets that one completely right if your Lieutenant Spock’s reaction is anything to go by.”

She winks at him.

“I’m sorry,” Chris mumbles. “I, um, appreciate the company, but there’s something I really need to do. I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

He gets up and leaves the canteen. He crosses the walkway as fast as he can without running, putting on a face grim enough for even the most friendly Denobulan to understand that he does _not_ want to be disturbed. When he reaches the bay, he climbs into the shuttle and locks it behind him.

So much for never spending another hour in there.

* * *

Chris is drifting in and out of an uneasy sleep when a series of loud bangs rips him back to reality. He sits up on the hard bench, wincing as his lower back protests. The shuttle is reverberating with the sound of someone knocking hard on its outer hull. Chris staggers to his feet and punches the hatch control.

Spock is standing outside.

“I believe our physician would disapprove of you holding my medication hostage.”

Chris can feel himself going white in the face.

“Damn it. I thought you brought it with you. I’m sorry.”

He turns to look for the hypospray, but Spock enters and brushes past him, producing it from the medical kit himself. Chris is ready to look away, but Spock shows no intention of baring his throat to Chris a second time.

“Estimated time of arrival is in nine minutes,” he says, slipping the hypo into one of the hidden pockets of his dark green Kelsarian tunic. “If you are done tormenting yourself, you might want to get ready for transport.”

Chris hums a wordless response. Of course Spock would know exactly what is going on with him. He watches the back of Spock’s head as the Vulcan turns toward the hatch. But instead of exiting, Spock closes it. Then he turns around and looks straight at Chris.

For a moment, Chris doesn’t know where to look. He feels like he’s a cadet at the Academy again, about to get scolded by a senior officer for some stupid drunken shenanigans. Only this time, _he_ is the superior officer, and his crime is infinitely more serious. And it’s about damn time he owned up to it. He steels himself and meets Spock’s eyes.

Spock’s face is all but unreadable. Yet, there is decidedly no anger in his expression. As Chris struggles to comprehend what is happening, he steps forward. Without breaking the eye contact, he reaches out and takes Chris’s face in his hands. Slowly, as if Chris might startle and break away, he leans in and presses his lips to Chris’s.

The kiss is perfectly chaste at first. But soon enough, Spock tilts his head and changes the pressure, coaxing Chris’s mouth open. Chris stands frozen, not daring to move, not knowing if he should run or reciprocate. Then Spock pulls Chris’s lower lip into his mouth and catches it between his teeth, and suddenly Chris could not walk away even if he wanted to. He can’t move, can’t think, can’t breathe –

Spock ends the kiss as carefully as he initiated it. As he pulls back, he takes care to run his fingers along Chris’s jaw line, tracing the stubble that has begun to grow in. He leaves another kiss on Chris’s cheek before stepping back entirely, his face schooled back into a perfectly blank expression.

“Eight minutes now,” he says, raising an eyebrow pointedly, and leaves the shuttle without another word.

Chris spends half of them staring at the empty space outside the hatch, before taking one last survey of the shuttle and running toward the transporter room.

* * *

Chris has only visited Denobula a handful of times. His father would often go there on various conferences throughout Chris’s childhood, but Chris himself first set foot on the planet as part of his Interspecies Protocol studies. His supervisor warned him that he might find himself in over his head, but Chris pushed through, wrote his final paper on Human-Denobulan interactions, and received a top grade to show for it.

As proud as he was of it back then, three decades of real life experience has taught Chris that he can only ever hope to scratch the surface of a society as alien and complex as the Denobulan. And right now, he has little interest in trying. All he wants is for Spock to get the medical attention he needs, and for the two of them to find a moment alone together.

They materialise right in the middle of a crowded lobby, and Chris immediately gets shoved forward by a distracted Denobulan who must have failed to notice his sudden appearance. By the time he registers what’s happening, Spock has already grabbed his arm to keep him from losing his balance. The push was not that hard, and Chris doesn’t need the help, but the touch is enough to awaken butterflies in his stomach.

“Let’s find the reception, shall we?” he says under his breath.

Spock scans the area and points toward a desk near a corner behind them.

“I believe that is the foreigner check-in,” he says, as Chris squints at the pictogram on the sign above the desk, which undeniably depicts a smiling Andorian.

They make their way slowly through the bright, noisy lobby. The crowd seems to consist entirely of Denobulans, so it comes as no surprise when there is no queue to the desk they’ve chosen. The man behind it is looking at the screen of some handheld device, clearly lost in whatever is happening on it. He jumps a little when he finally notices Spock in front of him.

A loud announcement blares in the background, making it impossible for Chris to hear what is being said, but a only minute later, the receptionist is placing two small badges on the desk in front of them. Spock picks them up and hands one to Chris, who turns it over in his hand, discovering a small screen with his name lit up on it. He follows Spock to a pair of doors, which open to reveal a wide transporter pad. As soon as they step onto it, the doors close behind them, and Chris feels a familiar tingling sensation as the transporter activates.

They rematerialise in a room nearly identical to the one they left, and attach their ID badges to their chests. As the doors open, a team of three Denobulans in medical uniforms is already waiting for them outside.

“Mister Spock,” says the woman in the middle. “Welcome. I’ve studied your file, don’t worry, we’ll sort this out in no time. Just come with me and we’ll get you prepped.”

With that, Spock is whisked away into a lift, and Chris is left with the remaining two Denobulans.

“Doctor Jomeel at your service,” the man in front of him says with a smile that widens until it balances precariously on the border between cordial and unsettling.

Chris must admit that he has seen worse attempts.

“I’m a xeno specialist – obviously,” Jomeel continues. “Did my penultimate thesis on human synovial joints. I’d love to have a go at your knee.”

Chris frowns.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Oh, it was in the files we received from Sovina. They took care of the acute contusion, but that knee of yours was a lost case to begin with. In fact, I’d recommend replacing the entire joint.”

Chris can think of at least three away missions off the top of his head where either of his knees, or both, took a serious beating, but he had no idea it was that bad. Sure, he’s felt the occasional pain, but he’d assumed it was something that simply came with age.

“I’ll consider it,” he says. “Thank you.”

He sounds distracted and entirely unconvincing to his own ears, but Jomeel nods, seemingly satisfied, and shakes his hand before hurrying off. The third in the group – an older woman in a uniform different from the doctors’ – immediately squeezes past him and looks up from a small padd.

“Captain. We have reserved a solitary room for each of you here in the xeno wing to accommodate your sleep requirements. Should you rather wish to cohabitate with some of your fellow patients, we’ll be happy to transfer you to a regular room.”

Chris shakes his head.

“Solitary will be fine, thank you.”

The woman nods.

“Wonderful. Just step in the lift and follow the lights.”

* * *

The turbolift stops at level 74. A neon green path is lit along the floor even as the doors open. Chris follows it past a small indoor garden, a spotless dining area equipped with some type of food synthesizers, and a vast number of anonymous closets, doors, and passageways.

In stark contrast to the other areas of the hospital that Chris has seen so far, this section seems downright deserted. He walks for several minutes without encountering a single other individual.

Eventually, the path disappears around a corner, and when Chris catches up, he finds himself in a softly lit corridor lined with colourful doors. The green path lights are flashing slowly in front of one of them – a blue door, the shade somewhere between that of Spock’s uniform and an early summer sky back on Earth. As Chris places his hand against it, the lock responds with a series of blips, and the door slides open under his touch.

Bright light hits Chris square in the face. He squints at the far wall of the room, which is made almost entirely out of glass, revealing the cityscape outside. Beyond the skyline, Denobula Triaxa floats like a ball of fire in the sky, its rays reflecting in the planes and curves of a hundred chrome skyscrapers. Chris is sure the view would be breathtaking if only he could look at it.

Apart from the massive window, the room is dominated by a spacious bed that is covered in pillows and multiple duvets. On one side of it, a hexagonal table with a screen and a cushioned chair have been placed next to a basic food synthesizer. On the other side, there are two additional doors. The first one, Chris discovers, opens to a closet. The second leads to a small, but well-equipped bathroom. Chris takes a moment to wash his hands before heading back out to figure out how to activate the window blinds.

When he finds the control panel and touches it, the entire glass wall dims in an instant, transforming the world outside until it appears soft and far away. Chris blinks and grimaces, forcing the muscles around his eyes to stretch and relax again.

In that moment, the screen on the table lights up, and a voice alerts him to an incoming transmission. Chris freezes.

“On screen – I guess?”

He heads over to the table as the computer obeys, treating him to the image of an empty room that he fails to recognise. He sits down and waits.

“Hello?” he tries after a while.

Suddenly, a door flies open at the end of the mysterious room, and Una enters the picture. She is barefoot, her hair is dripping, and she has a large, purple towel wrapped around herself. Chris feels himself sag with relief.

“Captain!” Una shouts as she approaches the screen, and there is a rattling as she pulls up a chair and dramatically arranges herself in front of the camera. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Reporting for duty,” Chris jokes, raising an eyebrow.

Una shakes her head.

“I let you go off on your own for _three days_, and you nearly get yourself blown up. How’s a girl supposed to get a _vacation_ around here?”

Chris squints at the screen.

“Are you on Risa?”

“Oh, shush.”

Una shoots him a wry smile. Then her face turns serious, and she leans even closer.

“So how is he?”

“Spock is fine. The Kelsarians patched him up alright, and the doctors here on Denobula are sorting out the rest as we speak.”

“And how are _you_?”

Chris licks his lips.

“It was a close call. As much as I hate to admit it.”

Una straightens.

“So I gathered,” she says quietly. “You two –”

She shakes her head.

“I just hope that whatever you were up to out there, you got what you came for. Take care of him, sir. And please, take care of _yourself_ as well.”

“I’m on it. Enjoy your vacation.”

The call ends, and Chris sinks back into the chair. The brief burst of happiness at seeing Una is promptly replaced by anxiety as his thoughts once more return to Spock.

He still cannot claim to know Spock’s reason for the second kiss. Some people, Chris presumes, might have done it out of pity. But Spock? Such a motivation would be entirely out of character. Spock may have changed since he left the Enterprise, and while Chris is not entirely sure who this new Spock is, he is fairly certain that pity still isn’t part of his repertoire. If anything, Spock’s intellect and integrity seem to have been augmented by a deeper sense of wisdom. Perhaps that is why Chris is growing so hopelessly attracted to him.

So no, pity can hardly be the explanation. But that doesn’t change the fact that Chris needs to keep his expectations as low as possible.

He feels restless and dishevelled, and his tunic is far too warm for the climate, so after another minute of trying and failing to relax, he gets back up and goes to explore the bathroom.

He quickly identifies a shaver and rids himself of his stubble. Next, he has the food synthesizer create a small jar of hair gel. He gets to work in front of the bathroom mirror, telling himself that it’s not about his looks _– it’s a question of personal comfort, that’s all. _Lastly, he returns to the screen and calls up information on where he can find a more advanced matter synthesizer.

Once more back in his room, Chris changes into his new standard issue navy shirt and black trousers. He collects his old clothes and brings them to the recycler, rubbing the velvet fabric slowly between his fingers before putting them in.

And then he synthesizes a sandwich and sits back down in front of the screen, searching the database for that Ira P. Jonasson novel he started reading on the Monsoon.

And so he eats, and he reads, and he waits – with bated breath and smouldering fire in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

After the slow passing of an hour, Chris receives a written message from Spock.

_“Reconvene later?”_

Chris sends an affirmative reply and awaits further instructions. Ten long minutes pass without another message, but at last, the screen lights up again.

_“Your room 2300 hours UTC.”_

Chris does a quick conversion from local time in his head, and finds that he has another three hours to spend before Spock is ready to see him. He might as well get out and explore the neighbourhood then. Take his mind off things. Things like _kissing Spock_.

He leaves the hospital and catches a transit shuttle to a nearby pedestrian area. He walks at an easy pace, crossing between vendors showcasing various crafts and treats, and stops occasionally to glance through the windows of the art galleries lining the broad street. Even as a foreigner, and a Starfleet poster boy at that, he can blend in here, among the myriad of people and cultures and colours. He slips into a restaurant that looks less crowded than the others, and tries a local dish from the dinner menu. For the first time since they set down on Kelsar III, he begins to feel truly relaxed.

The feeling remains with him until it’s time to return. He boards another shuttle, and the closer he gets to the hospital, the more nervous he becomes. An older lady shoots him a dark look, and he realises that he’s been tapping his foot hard against the floor.

Once back in his room, Chris breaks out a toothbrush and starts cleaning himself up. He contemplates taking another shower, but his plans are interrupted by another incoming transmission. He quickly washes his mouth and heads over to the table, no one but Spock on his mind – and so it hits him like a wave of cold water when he reads the words on the screen.

_“Incoming transmission: Commander Ash Tyler”_

For a second, Chris has half a mind to reject it. But he has little to gain from such childish behaviour, so instead, he simply sighs and calls it up on the screen. His discomfort must show on his face, however, because Tyler shifts his weight uncomfortably before he speaks. His hair is combed out of his face, and his clothes are strikingly plain – far less elaborate than Chris has seen on most Section 31 agents to this day. He looks neat, Chris must admit. Professional.

“Captain. I just thought you might want to hear the intel we’ve got on the attack on Kelsar Three.”

Chris purses his lips.

“Might as well,” he says carefully. “What’ve you got, Commander?”

“Well, at first we didn’t know _why_ the Valaterans broke off their attack. That is, until we found out about your presence. Seems that as soon as they picked up your Starfleet comm signature, they had a change of heart. Turns out they weren’t prepared to make an enemy out of the Federation.”

Tyler sighs and looks down for a second.

“The Valatera syndicate is a bunch of petty extortionists held together by an inner circle of black market traders. Section 31 has had eyes on them for some time, but we clearly underestimated the violence they’re capable of. I wanted to apologise to you personally on behalf of the organisation.”

Chris frowns.

“I wish I could say it’s the first lapse in judgment your people are responsible for. But the gesture is appreciated. And –

He clears this throat.

“– I realise this particular oversight must have been made well before your time.”

Tyler shrugs.

“Still,” he says, “it’s up to me to set things right now, isn’t it? Anyway, I just thought you might want to know that no matter what things were like for you there, you probably helped halting what could easily have become a planet-wide terrorist attack.”

Chris ponders the information for a few seconds.

“Thank you – I think?”

Tyler nods and ends the call. Chris buries his face in one hand, rubbing his eyes. God, he needs to stop being so hard on the man. Chris can’t imagine a job more complicated than commanding Section 31 – and being expected to reform it, at that. Tyler is going to need all the support he can get.

Chris checks the time and tells the computer to refuse any other transmissions unless they are from Spock. By now it is too late for a shower, so he spends the last minutes left pacing in front of the window. Tells himself that whatever happens tonight, he will handle it like a Starfleet captain.

The door chimes.

Chris takes a deep breath.

_Low expectations._

“Enter.”

All of Chris’s caution goes out the window the moment Spock steps into the room. Like Chris, he has abandoned his Kelsarian clothes, and now wears a black coat that follows every curve of his body. Slender boots cover his legs up to his knees, and there is no cast or any other medical device to be seen. Even his face looks different, though Chris doesn’t understand why until Spock turns his head to the side and it becomes clear that he has trimmed the edges of his hair and beard.

He is beautiful.

As he crosses the room, Chris feels as if gravity is shifting. The world is reshaping itself around them, and Chris is trapped in Spock’s orbit, and he will never, ever be able to leave.

They meet in the centre. Spock looks deep into Chris’s eyes and reads the question there. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches for Chris’s hand and brings it to his chest.

“I want this,” he says, covering Chris’s hand with both of his own.

He makes no further move, and Chris bites his lip.

“But –?”

“What I feel is Vulcan – and human. I am both, and therefore I am also neither. What precedence is there for me to build upon?”

Chris’s throat is tightening. He withdraws his hand from Spock’s chest.

“Spock , I –”

“And you keep disrupting my expectations. Surely you must see by now that your attempts at protecting me are counterproductive. A logical conclusion means nothing unless the premises are sound. I _cannot_ use logic as long as you provide me with corrupted data. I need your honesty. Perhaps now more than ever.”

Chris shakes his head.

“Okay, you’ve lost me,” he mumbles. “What exactly do you want – _need_ me to do?”

“I need you stop holding yourself back, _Christopher_.”

And, _oh_, if Chris’s heart doesn’t skip a beat. Whatever reply he has in mind gets lost on his tongue as Spock closes the distance between them – one hand sliding up Chris’s chest to his shoulder and the other gripping his neck.

“_Stop_ trying to protect me.”

The final syllable is little more than a whisper as Spock lunges forward and claims Chris’s mouth. His teeth crash gracelessly into Chris’s, and then his tongue enters Chris’s mouth – wet and rough, and_ oh god_.

The dying spark inside Chris flares up like wildfire.

He shoves his hand into Spock’s hair, closes it and _pulls_, forcing Spock’s head back so that he can get to his neck and press his lips to the pulsating artery, drag his teeth across it, suck a mark into the skin – one that says _this man is mine_. Spock lets out a breathless gasp, his hands curling into fists against Chris’s sides, beautifully uncoordinated.

Chris is a gentle lover. Whatever this is, this desire, it isn’t coming from him. He feels it in every fibre of his being, achingly familiar, and yet, he knows that its origins are alien. Spock’s emotions bleeding into his own.

He breaks free and takes a small step back, meeting Spock’s eyes as their ragged breaths mingle.

“I can feel you inside me,” he mumbles, with heat in his cheeks.

Spock closes his eyes.

“Your blood is coursing through my veins,” he whispers. “And my mind – through your neural pathways –”

Chris shivers as Spock reaches for his hand.

Their fingers intertwine – _and how can such a simple gesture be so terrifyingly intimate? –_ as their mouths find their way back to each other. Slowly, gradually, they slip into an effortless rhythm of giving and taking, of lips and tongues and teeth, until not even this is enough, and they part, and Spock looks at Chris with dazed determination.

_Okay._

Chris pulls his t-shirt over his head and throws it on the floor, before reaching for the clasp at Spock’s collar. His fingers fumble with it until Spock takes over, opens the coat, and slides it off his shoulders in one swift move. He steps back and takes his undershirt off as well, revealing a broad chest covered in coarse hair – and, _god_, Chris has always been one for the natural look.

They rid themselves of their boots and trousers while they’re at it. Running along the lower half of Spock’s left leg is a couple of smooth patches where the hair has yet to grow back after his surgery. Other than that, Spock’s body is the epitome of perfection – although Chris supposes he might be somewhat biased.

He tries not to think of how his own appearance has changed with the passing years. He is well aware that he’s an attractive man, but one of the downsides of being a captain is that he spends most of his work days sitting on his ass. Since the start of the five-year mission, he has lost mass everywhere but around his waist.

Spock, thankfully, is not as harsh a critic. Light hits his eyes from the side, bringing out the brown and the hazy green specks in them as he trails them down Chris’s body. His skin is burning against Chris’s when they come together again, nothing but their underwear left to keep their bodies apart.

And yet, Chris would be content to stay like this forever. As long as he can have Spock in his arms, safe and well, with no more walls between them. He pulls back a fraction, steadying Spock’s jaw with his hand as the Vulcan chases his lips.

“We can slow down,” he whispers, stroking the soft beard. “There’s no hurry.”

“I do not –” Spock mumbles, breaking off as he for a brief moment succeeds in capturing Chris’s lips, “I do not want to slow down. I want –”

He shifts and presses closer, and his breath hitches as his heavy erection drags against Chris’s thigh. Chris has to bite his lip to stop himself from groaning out loud. A corner of his mind lights up with surprise – as if part of him had thought that such a blatant sign of physical arousal would be entirely under Spock’s conscious control.

“I want you inside me,” Spock says, shattering every last one of Chris’s organised thoughts.

He takes a step back, trying to put himself back together.

“I _am_ inside you,” he answers, trailing his fingers down Spock’s arm. “Remember?”

Spock shakes his head minutely.

“I want to you make love to me,” he says, each word pronounced with care, as if he truly believes that Chris might otherwise miss the point. “Now. Please.”

Chris is fairly sure this is what a heart attack feels like.

“Are you sure about this?” he asks, marvelling at the fact that he is still able to form words.

Spock fixates Chris’s with his dark eyes.

“None of us can know what tomorrow holds. Should we not use our time to the best of our ability?”

He is right of course. And how many times will he have to ask Chris to _stop it_ with the protection and precautions, all while Chris keeps making the same mistakes?

_Still –_

“Have you ever –?”

He trails off, and Spock raises an eyebrow.

“I learned many things at the Academy. Not all were part of the official curriculum.”

“Huh.”

Chris cannot help the tiny, irrational spark of jealousy that flares up inside him. It’s ridiculous, because he has plenty of memories from his own Academy days that would rival even the juiciest gossip on the Enterprise. Surrounded by all that sexual adventurousness that is part of cadet culture, it goes without saying where Spock’s insatiable curiosity would lead him. In all honesty, Chris is relieved that none of this is entirely new to Spock. He is not sure he’d be up to the immense responsibility of guiding Spock through his first sexual experience with a lover.

“We, um –” he mumbles, evading Spock’s intense gaze, “we’ll need some lubricant.”

As embarrassed as he feels about having this conversation, he’d prefer to take care of the practicalities right away than head for an awkward break in the middle of things.

“No need,” Spock says. “I took the time to prepare myself prior to seeing you.”

Chris’s vision goes black around the edges when he realises what Spock is talking about.

“You –”

_Fuck. _The image of Spock with his hand between his legs, pushing down on slick fingers, sweat forming on his brow as he works himself open –

Chris’s hips stutter. His mouth makes a pathetic noise as he pulls himself back from the precipice, gripping Spock’s arms hard to steady himself.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, out loud this time. “I want to touch you. Want to feel you around me.”

He lets go of Spock’s arms and grabs his ass, squeezing one firm buttock in his hand. He moves his other hand to trace the outline of Spock’s erection through the thin fabric of his underwear, then increases the contact, grinding his palm against the hard length. Spock squirms under his touch and lets out a soft moan – the first real sound Chris has managed to draw from him.

But then Spock’s fingers wrap around Chris’s wrist, and he pulls Chris’s hand away with force.

“Please,” he whispers. “Don’t.”

And suddenly, Chris understands. If what Spock feels is so strong that it bleeds into his own mind, influencing his own emotions and actions – how singularly overpowering must these feelings not be for Spock? How hard must he not fight to remain in control?

He retracts his hands, taking care not to brush against any of Spock’s most sensitive zones. There are, after all, plenty of safe areas for him to explore instead. He lets his hands roam over Spock’s back, caresses his neck, weaves his fingers into his hair – then moves all the way down, gripping his waist and hips, pulling him closer. Spock is writhing against him, breath coming in short gasps. Chris runs one palm across his chest as he leans forward and kisses him again. Spock parts his lips without hesitation, hungry and eager for everything that Chris will give him.

With his palm flat against Spock’s sternum, Chris begins to nudge him backward, toward the bed. Spock yields like water to his touch, following Chris’s lead as if they are dancing. When the back of his knees hit the side of the bed, he climbs onto it and sits down, looking up at Chris with dark, dark eyes.

All of a sudden, he looks so vulnerable that it hits Chris like a blow to his gut. This is really happening. This is his Spock, and they’re about to _make love_.

_Fuck. I love you._

He sits down next to Spock and takes his face in his hands, placing another kiss on his lips.

“Please tell me if you need me to stop.”

_I love you._

“Spock? Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Spock’s voice is quiet but steady. He places his own hands over Chris’s.

_I love you._

And then they are moving again. Spock is stretching out on his back, and Chris finds himself on his elbows on top of him. They kiss again, Spock chasing Chris’s tongue with his own, and it’s like nothing Chris has ever experienced before. All of Spock’s emotions and perceptions are tied into his own, reflecting back and forth in a feedback loop of sensations, growing and growing in intensity.

Still, when Spock shifts and wraps one leg around Chris’s own, Chris can’t help but feel at a bit of a loss. He has always delighted in going slowly, using his hands and his mouth to explore and excite his lovers, bringing them to completion in whatever ways he can think of. He is nothing but confident in his ability to satisfy a sexual partner. But Spock has explicitly expressed his need for Chris to forego all of his usual routines. Chris should have known that nothing would ever be anywhere near normal with Spock.

But what Spock wants, Chris will give him.

He frees himself from Spock’s limbs and climbs off the bed, taking off his boxers and leaving them on the floor. Spock watches him with half-shut eyes, then removes his own underwear. Lying on his back, the action should result in a fair amount of awkward wriggling, but Spock somehow manages to make even this look fluid and natural. And then he is naked, and Chris can’t help but follow the trail of hair on his stomach all the way down – caressing with his eyes what he cannot touch.

His steps back to the bed are slow as he takes in the significance of this moment. When his knee weighs down the edge of the mattress, Spock is already drawing his knees up and parting them. Chris ends up settled between them, looking down into Spock’s face.

How different he looks like this. Layers upon layers of discipline peeled off – finally naked in every sense of the word.

Chris takes himself in his hand, at last, and strokes himself to full hardness. Spock lifts his right leg and rests it against Chris’s side, then brings the left one all the way up to Chris’s shoulder. And there is nothing left to do but for Chris to align himself, and find the angle and the pressure that will bring him home.

The first inch happens almost on its own. Spock is warm and slick and ready for him. When Chris keeps up the pressure and Spock tightens, he shifts his hands and brings Spock’s right leg up to his shoulder as well.

_That’s it, open up for me –_

Spock’s head falls back against the pillows as Chris keeps pushing into him. His breath comes in muffled gasps, and when Chris looks up, he finds that Spock has stuffed his fist into his mouth and is biting down on his knuckles. For a second, Chris fears that he is in pain, but as he reaches out with his mind, the only feeling radiating off of Spock is lust. Bright, oscillating waves of desire.

Chris pulls out a fraction and sinks back in, deeper than before. One more time, and he is all the way in, pressed flush against Spock’s body, closer than he ever thought possible. He gently lifts Spock’s legs down from his shoulders, taking particular care with the left one, even though, rationally, he knows that the injury has been fully healed. Spock immediately wraps his legs around his waist instead. Chris lowers himself down and takes Spock’s fist out of his mouth – coaxes his fingers into relaxing, so that he can intertwine them with his own.

Then he pulls out halfway and pushes back in.

Spock trembles and seeks again to muffle his cries, but when Chris takes hold of his other hand as well, he whimpers and squeezes both of Chris’s hands hard.

_More – now –_ _ please – Chris –_

And Chris buries his face against the burning hot skin of Spock’s shoulder, and begins to move in earnest.

_God_, it feels _amazing_. Spock is tight and hot and perfect around him. And yet, as Chris picks up the pace, he is spurred on not by his own pleasure, but by the never-ending stream of thoughts and sensations flowing from Spock’s mind into his own.

_More –_

_Harder –_

_Never felt like this –_

Chris holds on to Spock’s hands for as long as he can, but eventually he is forced to let go and find proper purchase on the thick duvet. Spock instantly moves his hands to Chris’s face instead.

_Please – _

_Need you –_

Chris adjusts his position. He moves slowly until he is certain that they are both comfortable – that he will be able to keep thrusting for as long as it takes. He gives Spock no warning save for a shivering sigh of blissful relief as he finally allows himself to give in.

He gives in, and he gives everything.

He moves, and Spock curls toward him. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes squeezed shut, and his hair is sticking to his forehead in damp strands. When Chris snaps his hips, Spock presses his face against his shoulder and lets out a desperate whine.

So Chris snaps his hips again, and again – _harder, faster –_ until the world is reduced to nothing but that singular rising tide, and there are novas exploding in front of his eyes. And then his vision whites out, as he tips over the edge and falls, and falls, and falls.

And he emerges, spent, and new.

* * *

_So where does this leave us?_

* * *

Later, Chris gently removes his arm from under Spock’s head and props himself up on his elbow. He caresses Spock’s face lightly with his free hand, tracing invisible lines across his cheekbones. Spock’s hair is curling ever so slightly at his temples, and Chris rubs the strands between his fingers, feeling as if he is discovering yet another secret.

“The telepathic link from your mind to mine was never intended to become bidirectional,” Spock says, his deep voice surprisingly steady after what has just transpired between them. ”Yet, it did. This formed a temporary bond that should not have lasted outside the confines of the temple. And yet – it did. It _is _fading, and will at some point cease to exist entirely. Yet, its brief existence will have changed the world forever.”

“For the better, I hope,” Chris mumbles.

“You still doubt my ability to judge what is best for me.”

Chris drops his head against Spock’s shoulder.

“I’m your _captain_, Spock. There are complications I haven’t even _begun_ to take into account –”

Spock pulls back a fraction, prompting Chris to lift his head and look at him again.

“Technically, I have yet to resume my duty under your command.”

There is a subtle gleam of defiance in his eyes that Chris is certain he’d find amusing if the situation weren’t so serious.

“And what will happen when you do?” he asks, his voice coming out sharper than he intends it to.

Spock remains unfazed.

“Then the nature of our relationship will undergo yet another change,” he says. “In which direction, I cannot predict. However, as someone who has spent the past months living in multiple times at once, I have come to develop a new appreciation for the present. If I may make a request, I would therefore ask that we focus on the here and now.”

And Chris can work with that. _Hell, _after Boreth, it’s the only thing he can work with.

He weaves his fingers into the soft, damp hair behind one pointed ear, and covers Spock’s lips once more with his own.

* * *

Five months later, Chris receives an honorary invite to the first ever Vulcan-Kelsarian Philosophical Symposium.

Kora arrives with ochre on her cheeks and goldenrod beads in her braids. They find an empty, dimly lit hallway next to the reception area where they can greet her in private before the opening ceremony. She mirrors Spock’s salute with the ease of recent practice, and embraces Chris with all the warmth of a long lost friend. Chris steps back after that, letting Kora and Spock speak with each other as he straightens his gold skant dress uniform.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for my people,” Kora says. “This will change everything.”

“Change is inevitable,” Spock replies. “But through continuous effort, we may also make progress.”

Chris has become used to seeing him clean-shaven again, but his Vulcan ceremonial robe is still a novelty after the many form-fitting coats and the Starfleet uniform. There is a pause, and Chris is about to suggest that they head for the reception area, when Spock speaks again.

“_Ensu-na’hress-en-ad’athessa,_” he says slowly.

Chris stops dead and stares at him, but Spock is looking straight at Kora.

“Those were your words to me,” he adds, ”after the translator went out.”

Kora begins to smile. It grows slowly, from the corners of her mouth, until all of her sharp teeth are visible between lips stretched wide.

“Your heart cannot falter,” she translates, “for it no longer beats alone.”

It takes a moment for Chris to process the words and their context. But when he’s done, it’s as if all the pieces have finally fallen into place, and the seams between them have been closed. He reaches for Spock’s hand.

_We are healing. All of us. Together_.

Instantly, Spock reaches back along that bright chain of nerves and neural pathways that connects their minds.

_You are healing me. You._

_Your blood, your breath, your love._

Chris still lacks the most rudimentary of filters – truth is, he may never possess the mental discipline necessary to develop them. As he forms a reply in his mind, Spock reaches out and pulls a stray thought from him.

_I won’t always be here._

Chris freezes, protests, but Spock intertwines their fingers, locking them together.

_Even then._

_Even in your absence, you will be with me._

The doors at the end of the hallway crack open, letting in the murmur from the audience that has gathered outside. A voice calls out for _Hal-ren-Kora_ and _S’chn T’gai Spock_ to take the stage.

Chris straightens. He disentangles himself from Spock and looks at Kora, who nods. As the doors open fully before them, she takes the lead, another smile already forming on her face as she moves to face the crowd. Spock and Chris fall in behind her.

And side by side, they step into the light.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I’m a massive language nerd, here follows a note on Kora’s Kelsarian phrase. 
> 
> _ensa – s._ heart  
_-u –_ 2nd person possessive suffix  
_na –_ negative prefix, used in front of words that begin with consonants  
_hresse – v._ falter, fail (the digraph ⟨hr⟩ represents a type of guttural R)  
_en –_ preposition denoting causality  
_ad –_ negative prefix, used in front of words that begin with vowels  
_athesse – v._ beat, pulse  
_-a –_ suffix used to stress that an action is performed by a single individual (archaic)
> 
> The literal translation of _“ensu na’hress en ad’athessa”_ would be something along the lines of _“heart-yours not-falter because not-beat-singular”_.


End file.
